Lake Freezes, Six Degrees and Partly Cloudy

7:00

7:25

Up ant 6:20, with Evie, so we are both sitting here, fireplace is on, listening to the pundits try to make sense of yesterday's election.  It  amazes me how anyone could vote for any of the group with the exception of Huntsmen, who was last, and Romney who at least sounds rational at times though charmless and spewing doublespeak.  I am reading a new book called THINKING, FAST AND SLOW by Daniel Kahneman which, I hope, will help me to understand why people vote so often against their own self interest( the book purports to help us to understand our errors in judgement and choice).  He talks in the introduction about how biases and heuristics(basically a rule of thumb determine our choice, not necessarily experience and reason.  More on this later (when I understand it more clearly).  His most easily identifiable heuristic would be ease of memory (what thought comes most easily to mind when thinking about something).  In the case of politicians, it might be something positive you have remembered about the candidate, so you vote for him, but if you really looked at all his positions and votes, you would vote against him.  Enough for 6:00 in the morning.

We are amazed at the lake this morning, frozen and snow covered when, just yesterday, it was unfrozen except for ice junks forming close to shore.  The cold weather the last twenty four hours must have done the trick.  It looks like another cold but partly cloudy day, a good day to cross country ski for the first time this year at Long Point State Park.

We braved the cold yesterday morning, walking the CI, through heavy winds and snow, about as cold as we have been in quite awhile.  It's the kind of wet cold wind that penetrates your clothing, clothes, so that it can be uncomfortable walking into the wind, fine when it's at your back.  Still, it felt good to be out, wind biting your face (a form of suffering we enjoy), snow crunching under feet, the righteousness we feel when we get home.  Later in the afternoon, we headed into Lakewood, to the post office, to pick up two weeks of mail, to AT & T for help with Evie's new phone, to Wegman's, the bank, and Sam's Club.  Not much fun but we got it done.

For dinner, Evie made one of my favorites, chicken and biscuits, from Ina Garten's cookbook, and we have enough left over for another meal.  We watched a couple of episodes of MAD MEN, then some of the election returns but they were so boring, we went to bed by 10:15, to read and play Word With Friends.

Turkish tea

Set of Turkish Tea Glasses

Finally, as you can see, one of my great pleasures, especially during the winter is to sit down with a good book, a warm house, comfortable chair and have some Turkish tea in our Turkish tea glasses.  We brought ten cups, saucers and spoons back in 1977 and haven't really used them much till we retired and had time to enjoy tea.  If you go to Turkey, you will see Turks drinking tea from these cups all over the country.  I love drinking out of them, perhaps a bit of nostalgia, taking me back to our days in Turkey in the 1970's.  And the Turkish tea, from the Black Sea area, also takes me back (I get it from a Turkish Estore called Tulumba).  The good life, the remembered life.