Time really does start moving faster the older you get. As a kid I remember the time from Halloween to Christmas to be an eternity. Halloween was the first celebration starting the holiday season, in my book. Then you had to endure Thanksgiving which was just a day for the older members of the family to get together and chat while dragging their kids along. Then it seemed like time stopped while we waited for Christmas.
Now Halloween is barely over and Christmas is here!
I started this a week ago so now the new year 2009 is here! I keep busy with little things and that just makes time fly. This last week since Christmas has been really cold. The last three days have been -15F or colder for the over day high temp. Last nights low was -33F and we are the lucky ones around here. Down the road a couple of miles it hasn't been above -30F for 3 days. We've already burned all the wood I had stock piled. As soon as it warms a little I'll have to go out and cut down some of the dead trees around our place. I'm glad I had the furnace guy here in October. It is a comfort to know the furnace is working when it is so cold out.
Tomorrow Mary and I are going to look at new hybrid cars. Both of our cars have 150K miles on them and are starting to act up a little. Mary's family from Finland is coming over next summer and we are going to need 2 cars to get everybody around so we decided to trade the Golf in on either a Toyota Prius or Honda Civic Hybrid. We don't drive very much any more but both the Golf and Forester have broken down this winter when we needed them so it just makes sense to me to get one reliable car. There are quite a few Priuses around Willow and everybody I have talked to seems pleased with them. Most of the driving we do is less then 5 miles one way. We do go to Wasilla about once a week and that is about 60 miles round trip.
I think Mary is going to pick up a new sewing machine tomorrow too. She does an awful lot of sewing and has worn out or broken 2 machines since she stopped working. I told her a few years ago to get the best sewing machine she thought she needed but shen has never taken me up on on. Now she has a sewing buddy and they both work on the same project some times so when Mary's sewing machine craps out now it effects both of them.
We had a bit of a situation come up over Christmas. Normally we call my mom when us Alaskans get together on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day so we all get to talk with her. This year things were kind of different so I first tried calling on Christmas Eve and didn't get any answer. We tried a few times on Christmas and still no answer. We thought maybe Tom had taken her to his new farm to celebrate out there so we tried calling Tom and couldn't connect with him. So we decided to wait until Monday and if we couldn't get through we would go straight to the boss, Nancy. Monday we called and got through to Ma and of course she said she hadn't been anywhere and then told us all about her new kitten. Tom finally emailed me and gave me his new contact information and a little info on his new farm. The place sounds really neat. It was built in 1878 and he has 8 horses on it. Last I heard he only had 2 horses. It is located very close to the ski area that I learned to downhill ski at about 45 years ago. Anyhow Tom said that my uncle John had taken Ma for Christmas.
Well, I have to bundle up and go put the goats to bed. I close the barn up a little early when its so cold because the heater in the shop is just barely keeping the temp stable and with the door open for the goats it has to work that much hardy because their pen cools down so much. So off I go into the -28F night air.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Thanksgiving is over.
It's hard to believe that over a week has gone by since I started the last entry. Something came up and I had to leave. Since then we have enjoyed a great Thanksgiving dinner prepared by Brad. This is the first year that Brad's dad was missing. He moved to Montana a few months back and I did not even get a chance to ask about him. Brad's mom and her new hubby Rob were there. I had not seen Sue or Rob since Brad and Maija got married last fall.
Winter is really setting in this year. We are just lucky the price of oil has gone down a bit from what it was this past spring. So far we have had 2 snaps below zero and about a foot of snow. I've been supplementing our heat with our wood stove but it is a real bear of a stove. I think I found one problem that was keeping it from burning very well but it still burns way too much wood for the amount of heat it puts out. We only heat the house to 64 during the day and 62 at night so when we are sitting around watching a movie in the evening it gets pretty chilly. We still do not have enough snow for good snowmobiling out back. I checked it out this afternoon and found the lakes are covered with overflow and the snow is not deep enough to cushion the rocks that you tend to hit in the trails. Overflow is a real problem because slushy ice will build up on the snowmobile to the point where it can not move. It catches you by surprise because the condition happens even at subzero temperatures, like today.
Mary got into an exercise group and a quilting group this fall. She put herself on a diet last summer and dropped quite a few pounds. She had been walking to the post office at least once a week during the summer but when the cold came she stopped walking outside and started using the treadmill. She got tired of that pretty fast so when they started a new exercise group she joined. She has made some new friends and one of them has a husband that is kind of like me so we get together once a week or so to play cards. The couple mush dogs like most Willow residents. They use the old dogs that other mushers don't want anymore. They have about 12 mushing dogs and then 5 dogs that live in the house with them.
I plan on updating the blog more frequently during the winter. I just finished updating the operating system on my main desktop computer and will probably update the webserver in the coming week. I do plan on revising the website again because the remote webcam in the goat barn just didn't work.
So time to fix some supper and feed the animals. More later.
Winter is really setting in this year. We are just lucky the price of oil has gone down a bit from what it was this past spring. So far we have had 2 snaps below zero and about a foot of snow. I've been supplementing our heat with our wood stove but it is a real bear of a stove. I think I found one problem that was keeping it from burning very well but it still burns way too much wood for the amount of heat it puts out. We only heat the house to 64 during the day and 62 at night so when we are sitting around watching a movie in the evening it gets pretty chilly. We still do not have enough snow for good snowmobiling out back. I checked it out this afternoon and found the lakes are covered with overflow and the snow is not deep enough to cushion the rocks that you tend to hit in the trails. Overflow is a real problem because slushy ice will build up on the snowmobile to the point where it can not move. It catches you by surprise because the condition happens even at subzero temperatures, like today.
Mary got into an exercise group and a quilting group this fall. She put herself on a diet last summer and dropped quite a few pounds. She had been walking to the post office at least once a week during the summer but when the cold came she stopped walking outside and started using the treadmill. She got tired of that pretty fast so when they started a new exercise group she joined. She has made some new friends and one of them has a husband that is kind of like me so we get together once a week or so to play cards. The couple mush dogs like most Willow residents. They use the old dogs that other mushers don't want anymore. They have about 12 mushing dogs and then 5 dogs that live in the house with them.
I plan on updating the blog more frequently during the winter. I just finished updating the operating system on my main desktop computer and will probably update the webserver in the coming week. I do plan on revising the website again because the remote webcam in the goat barn just didn't work.
So time to fix some supper and feed the animals. More later.
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