Brrr it's cold

Well I can't complain, I'll complain a little. It was a wind-chill/real feel of ten degrees this morning. It was cold, cold cold. I had to bang against the front door to get out, it had iced up all around.

The midwest and north got a worse dose though so that is why I can't complain. It will be warm here in a few days, and up north it will be warm there in a few months.

My Christmas vacation is winding down. I will head back to school Monday for an in-service day (no kids) and then on Tuesday it will all start back up. Routine, kids, headaches, laughs, business...everything.

Church will wind up too. We have not had a Wednesday night prayer meeting for two weeks because of the holiday and many people have been traveling so attendance has been low, and our SS teacher was traveling so we have had subs. All the routines will ramp back up for the new year, which for me is like the second half of the old year because I go from May to May. ) School out to school out :)

I finished When Crickets Cry which was a good book. A heart surgeon confronts his past via the illness of a little girl. Well written, and absorbing, if a tiny bit slow. It was a bit sentimental but not overly so. I give it a B+. I started an Anne Rivers Siddons book so we'll see how that goes. So far it is OK. A jilted wife rebuilds her life.

I watched many good movies on snagfilms. City of Gold, about the Yukon Gold Rush and followed that up with The Fatal Glass of Beer, an early WC Fields short, a spoof on Yukon Gold Rush movies. City of Gold is a great documentary about the city of Dawson during the Klondike Gold Rush. The narrator uses photos in a realistic way, a method Ken Burns said he copied in his Civil War documentary. Anyway, after that, I watched WCFields in the 1933 short, "A Fatal Glass of Beer" spoofing all the early movies about the Klondike Gold Rush. In the short, WC Fields would constantly open the door and say "T'aint a night fit for man or beast!" and an obviously fake bucket of snow would hit him in the face. It was funny, and even funnier *after* watching it. Like, I chuckled when I remember WC Fields had a dachshund in his dog sled line. "Mush!" Or he went outside to the well and pumped and ice cubes came out. Or he announced to his wife, "Bessie, I'm a-goin to milk the elk!" The fatal glass of beer is a spoof temperance song he played for a Canadian Mountie, off key, on a zither, in mittens...It was very Monty Python-esque movie. Seeing the 'City of Gold' and then 'Fatal Glass' was a hoot.

I had coffee with a friend yesterday at the local yuppie cafe. Our coffee turned into breakfast, then three hours of chat. Girls!

I made a kickin' slaw this week. Cabbage slaw, roasted broccoli, raisins, and hummus-mayo sauce. And wrapped in a flour tortilla. Yum!! I also made roasted veggies, and penne with veggies. I baked a pumpkin-angel food cake with chocolate chips too. That was delicious and- light.

January is hard. After a blessed vacation like this, in fleece jammies, drinking steaming tea, cooking, reading, and watching movies, who wouldn't be loathe to have it all end? But work is good too. It does me good to get back. But not yet. Monday is still three days away ;)