New Year's Day

New Year's Day: Mostly sunny, with a high near 16. Wind chill values as low as -18. Northwest wind between 11 and 16 mph.

Since we moved to this hill in the hinterlands, I have found weather forecasts increasingly useless. If a few inches of snow is forecast, we get a foot. If fifteen-mile-per-hour wind gusts are foretold, we get slammed with blows three times that velocity. I think it used to frustrate me,but now I'm smarter: If it's winter it'll be cold and likely to snow; if it's summer, it'll be hot and likely to rain. I'm a genius.

The wind is still whistling and howling here. The fire was down to sparks when I got up and it's rolling along again nicely now. As chilly as it was, I thought about country people in the old days and how toasty my house would have felt to them.

Angus went outside to do some personal business and got stuck, too cold to travel twenty feet back to the house. The snow is so cold it burns.

I sent Marly The Nanny Dog out after him and she herded him along for a few feet. Then she came back in and stood wagging inside the door, murmuring encouragement and wagging her tail as I jammed on whatever covering was at hand and bumbled out to retrieve him. She's a good little helper, but she's mightily aware of the concept of self-preservation.

I drank some more coffee while the almost-empty woodbox taunted me.

Into the serious gear and out to the woodshed; in good weather we call it "an enclosed porch." I loaded up the wagon and hauled firewood into the livingroom, angling carefully so as not to scar walls, doorways, furniture. Now the woodbox is full of wood so cold that the room temperature is dropping.