Friday, January 16, 2009

A Little Wild Turkey

Nah, no turkeys around here .. or turkey buzzards. However, it is day two of our bitter cold. After a day of running around in below freezing temps when your hands start to ache with the cold walking from car to door and back again, I've taken matters into my own hands -- a little Wild Turkey. Friends and acquaintances from down here know we are from "the North" and think that we are always prepared and used to this cold weather. I always remind them that is one of the reasons we moved here, the milder winter temps.

I remember the days in Michigan of counting in winter:

  1. The number of consecutive days of below freezing weather. I remember some January weeks where we thought above freezing temps would never come again.
  2. The number of consecutive days of below zero wind chills. Wind chill is not really understood here.
  3. The number of consecutive days of below zero weather. Yes, by counting those, we were displaying how tough we were to withstand such brutal temps.
  4. By the end of January we were also counting the number of consecutive days without sunshine. How do people endure it? Maybe that is why people go crazy during the winter months. Now they have a fancy name for it - Seasonal Affective Disorder. We used to call it cabin fever.

No one told me all those years ago that a little bourbon would not make me care much about those four items! Moving to Tennessee sure helped!

Cold as a Witch's ...

Ah yes, another Hankism - cold as a witches tit! That about describes the weather here in the greenest land in the home of the free! Who sent that Alberta Clipper down? Please take it back. I swear my blood has thinned out and this cold weather is awful.

Let me tell you something about heat pumps. They are really pretty efficient, but the air they blow is cool. My desk in my office straddles the air duct and even though I have a deflector on it, I still get that cold air blown on me while it is doing this frigid thing outside. I might have to crochet leg warmers!

Maybe I'll crank up the fireplace later.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

And the BIG NEWS IS ...

Not much happens in this little town. It can be downright boring. I did have one heart-stopping moment yesterday when I thought I had lost one of our credit cards. I'm glad to say I didn't lose it, but I hate that feeling.

Older daughter has been mooching fewer meals from her mom and dad lately and working more hours. We miss her.

Younger daughter has been stressed out to the limit recently. I think her school commute is getting to her this winter.

Even my aunt in western Michigan says this winter has been a crazy one. She says they've had so much snow they're hauling it to the ponds at her condo complex.

My hair stylist is expecting a little girl in June - when I asked her what colors she was considering, she thought some sort of animal print and pink!

The big news here is that we have expected temps tonight of below zero! Wind chills even colder than that. I foresee a lot of dead batteries in the next few days. Hopefully, mine won't be one of them as long as we don't accidentally pop open the hatch window on my CR-V again and drain the battery!