Oliver Moss

It is 16° this morning and expected to get up to 23°. It will probably snow some more. But then next week, it looks like we're going to have the January Thaw. The long range forecast is calling for temps in the mid-40s. I've seen warmer Thaws; there was one memorable one many years ago when it was in the 60s and I was wandering around in the fields behind my office building taking photographs of wildflowers (mostly dandelions, but still, it was January). Those fields aren't there anymore; businesses have moved in. But this was long enough ago that the road that goes past the building was still new. Now it has been long enough for businesses to have built new buildings, lived there a few years, then gone out and new businesses to have moved in -- or not, as there are actually a couple of places that have been empty for a while.

Time. What is time?

Anyway. Yesterday, it snowed a fair amount, but there were also periods of much welcome sunshine. I guess that's what they call snow showers -- it was like one of those days where it's sunny, then it rains heavily for ten minutes or so, then it's sunny again -- only with snow. My snow guy showed up right around the time he uwually does. Since I hadn't cleaned off the van, yet, I had to go out and do that later. I was outside for a good forty-five minutes cleaning off the van, reshoveling the path across the yard to the mailbox, cutting a section out of the snowbank by the mailbox for the mail carrier to maneuver their jeep into, and cleaning up the edges of my driveway, since Snow Guy doesn't always do the whole thing -- just two more swipes of his snowblower would've done it, too. Still, it's worth what I pay him to not have to shovel it myself, as that would take at least two hours -- more if the snow is wet.

I didn't do much of anything again yesterday. I took various journals upstairs to my craft room and did beginning-of-the-year collages in them. I decorated the January pages in my new desk calendar. I'm not entirely pleased with them; they didn't turn out the way I envisioned. Oh, well. That happens sometimes. I didn't clean up there. I didn't really clean anywhere.

I took a Nap With Cats, which was nice. I do like to nap with a black cat tucked up under my chin. Well. Parker. I like to nap wtih Parker tucked up under my chin. Tegan is too much of a wiggler. She can have my lap.

It was after 4:00 p.m. when I went out to deal with the rest of the driveway, partly because I waited until after I'd changed the kitty litter and had the trash ready to go, since I had to get the bins to the end of the driveway -- another reason to clean up the edges, because I also had to dig the bins out. I got both the trash and the recycling out -- normally only the trash goes out because the bins are huge and it takes me a couple of months to fill up the recycling one.

I didn't read again last night; I watched a movie instead. I had wanted to watch Little Women, and it wasn't until after it started, that I remembered that I had, in fact, seen this version shortly after it came out and disliked it, and it was the newer version that I wanted to watch. This is the '90s version with Winona Ryder as Jo, Susan Sarandon as Marmee, Christian Bale as Laurie, and Gabriel Byrne as Friedrich. I read the book a few times when I was a kid and the movie felt more like a highlights reel to me than anything else. (One of my reading goals for this year is to reread the book, and if I could find the Louisa Mae Alcott biography that I was obsessed with when I was in elementary school, I'd reread that, too, but I don't remember the title or author, only that it was in the school library.) I spent a good chunk of the movie trying to remember where I'd seen Aunt March before. I finally had to look her up this morning; she played Sister Mary Lazarus in the Sister Act films.

There were almost no animal noises yesterday. There was a brief moment around sunset when I heard some noise over my office, but it stopped and I heard nothing until Parker scratched to be admitted to the bedroom around 11:30. And Parker doesn't count...though he did it a couple of times and had short conversations with Mr. Spray Bottle both times. I finally slept last night...after the second or third conversation between them. It was almost 7:00 a.m. when I got up this morning. As I may have mentioned, this has not been a particularly restul vacation.

However, the Paladin's sister gave me the contact information for a local person who took care of her bat problem for her. He also does other animals, so I will, at some point, give him a call. He might be able to suggest a stopgap measure for closing up the back of the garage until I have enough money to hire a contractor to do it properly. Or he mght even be able to do it himself. At the very least, if there's a hole into the house where I think there's a hole into the house, he'll be able to close that up, as that is part of his service.

Today, unless it snows a lot, I'll be meeting BFT at Applebee's for dinner and to exchange gifts. I might even have dessert. Mmmm, lava cake (or whatever they call it).

I don't really have any other plans for the day (the last day of my vacation, because tomorrow is technically just the weekend, which I would have off anyway) since I gave up on the Epic Cleaning earlier in the week. Maybe I'll start reading Yuletide; other than my own gift, I haven't read any of it, and reveals happened yesterday. But that's usually the way of it because I get caught up in reading Shortcuts.

And it's time for the Snowflake Challenge. I'm already Late To The Party, as that started yesterday. I generally don't see the challenges until the day after, though, just because I tend to read DW only in the mornings while I'm eating breakfast.