More Snow, More Cold, That's Winter

8:00

8:23

It's finally getting light and I cannot make out the delineation between the sky and the lake; it's one vast canvas of gray, with our tree dominating the picture.  It's the fog on the lake that's creating this illusion.  And the snow's whiteness jumps out from the gray of the lake and sky. As the fog disappears, I can see that the lake is beginning to freeze again, beginning with the shoreline.   Shane, the snow plow guy, came by around 7:00, clearing the road, his second time this year.  It looks like a frigid morning, even day.  It's 12º at the moment, may climb to a mighty 16º later.  Winter!

Yesterday was a day of brief blizzards, then clearing skies. The roads were fine as long as you picked your times.  We probably got about four or five inches during the day, another six to eight last night. And today should be similar.  We both were not sure what to do with our time yesterday because of the weather.  But around 9:00, it seemed to clear up, at least stop snowing, so I drove to yoga, hoping the weather would hold.  Class was good, just five of us, and my drive home was easy as long as I took my time.  When I got home, it began to snow hard, so both Evie and I got out our snow shovels and cleared the parking area.  We like to keep it cleared and find that clearing it every time it snows, even if we do it two or three times a day, makes it much easier than waiting for a heavy snow fall. And we don't need a snow blower.

Evie was not sure whether to go to the gym after shoveling as the snow continued.  But by 12:30, it stopped, so she quickly got dressed and drove off.  I had a lunch of leftover  potato pancakes and eggs and watched some TV before moving to the couch and reading and napping.  Evie was home by 3:00, the roads were fine so we made a good decisions to take to the roads or we were just lucky. And for a half hour, blue skies appeared, challenging the gray of winter.

Late Afternoon Blue Skies

It began to snow hard around 4:00 so we decided to start our cocktail hour early at 5:00, to take advantage of the remaining light.  We had cheese, crackers, and apple, along with a Manhattan to celebrate the first heavy snow of he year.  We love to sit in our living room and watch the gray turn to dark blue than black, as the snowflakes play in the spotlight.

Cocktail Hour Blizzard

We did not eat until about 7:00 and it was an easy dinner because early in the day, Evie had experimented again with making her own lasagna noodles and this time she put together a lasagna without cooking the noodles before putting together the dish.  So she had it baking in the oven while we enjoyed the early evening.  It was delicious, light and creamy from the white sauce and the noodles were perfect.  We watched another episode of Making A Murderer, three to go.  Then, we watched Obama's final State of the Union and, as always, were impressed by it, by him, by the power of the well spoken word.  And we liked the optimism of it, in striking contrast to the Republican's version of gloom and doom in America.  I suppose we are somewhere in between. We did not stay up to listen to the pundits because they would be predictable; Fox New making fun of it, MSNBC, admiring and somewhat more reasonable.