December 26, 2009

With Christmas behind us we can now concentrate on enjoying Carlo's days off - well mine too; but I'm still on vacation! It snowed all night long after two days of rain. I got up fairly early to pack, shower and to shovel the unexpected accumulation of snow. Because Carlo had to work and do the same, we didn't pull away from my house until almost 10:00 am. Of course the usual two stops were made before embarking on what appeared to be a pretty traffic free highway. As time passed there were more cars getting on and the problem then became the weather. It seemed to worsen as we traveled further north and at some points we were in the midst of some white-out conditions. Of course the crazy drivers didn't help and with the roads as horrible as they were, we didn't see one accident. We did pass one stranded motorist (well we think he was stranded - maybe he wasn't!) We passed a front end of a semi truck that took out a guard rail - possibly yesterday or maybe earlier - not the cab, just the fenders, hood and grill - we also passed lots of state plows, noticed a flock of birds and was quite surprised to see the barn still leaning!

Due to the weather it took us four hours to get to O'Wich and even the highway leading to our road was a bit weather worn. When we arrived we noticed the front of the truck encased with ice. It certainly was a wintry drive and we were quite relieved to have arrived safely.

During the week, Bernie had dropped off a load of firewood so it looks like tomorrow is gonna be a busy day. We will be stacking wood in our empty wood cribs...that is gonna be a lot of work.

We decided to have left-over Christmas turkey dinner for lunch and then went to visit Paul, Betty and Steve. Today is Paul's birthday and we wanted to give him his gift along with the Christmas presents we brought along. They gave us a set of solar lights that have hummingbirds on the top that will illuminate when they are charged. We'll put those out in the spring.

While Carlo ran for some last minute groceries we needed, I attempted to keep the fire going - I really am not good at this chore! When he got back he determined the wood is hard and takes a while to get going! At least it wasn't my lack of fire skills that kept us from having heat. I was able to watch the squirrels and birds after Carlo put out some fresh food for them.

6:30 pm - 58° 40° 20°

I was feeling like one of the five (current count) birds that hit the patio door - I decided to call it a night around 8:00 pm. Nothing like sleeping at O'Wich! Good night!