Monday, 1:30 pm: Another day in the frozen northland. Yesterday was a day to prove my alleged hardiness, such as it is. I was out in the wind operating our snowblower. I was frozen to the bone. I had to come inside a few times and my wife warmed me up with hot tea; then back outside. Occasionally the wind chill dipped into the minus numbers. My fingers and nose are still attached with no ill-effects. Nothing has snapped off.

Ruth by our Internet satellite dish

After briefly clearing snow and ice this morning, today is an inside day. We have an installer putting in a new kitchen floor. There’s plenty of noise and sawdust, but we’re warm. All of our kitchen and dining room furniture is crammed into our living room, porch and any other free space that we could find. The plan is for the floor to be finished by tomorrow afternoon.

. . . and in our backyard in one of the paths we cleared for our dogs

At the moment I am dog sitting two of our dogs upstairs. They tend to get in the way of the work. The other two dogs are dozing in their crates downstairs. All of the dogs are too curious; they have to put their noses into the equipment the floor installer is using. Eventually we decided they’re safer, but not happy, and are out of harm’s way.

Our houseplants overwhelm our living space in the winter

The forecast is for rain and possibly sleet tomorrow, and then it’s back to my gulag labors outside.

Current values from our wireless Davis Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temperature: 18.6° [F.]

Barometer: 30.023 and falling rapidly

Humidity: 51%

Wind: S at 4 mph light & variable

Visibility: ca. 3 miles

Skies: light haze/overcast?

Precipitation: None

Since midnight:

Low temperature: -2.9° [F.] at

High wind: 12 mph at 12:45 am