BRRRRRR!!!!!

WOW - it has been cold here. The wind has been in a hurricane pattern - circular, just off shore - sustained winds of 76 mph and gusts up to 94. And it is zero degrees out. If you don't have a windchill chart handy I can give you the exact windchill factor - STINKING COLD!!!!!

It is dumping massive amounts of snow in the Juneau - Sitka area (not really part of the state - just our capital, we all think we should give it back to Canada - it's way over on the continent). anyway, the rest of us here in the south central part of the state don't have that much snow. We had 2 inches, but the wind has taken it all and put it in like 3 drifts that are about five feet wide and maybe 6 inches deep. the rest of the ground, is barely white.

As you all know, our house leaks on the north side and it has been very cold in here. We have 3 space heaters (which I worry about all the time) that we have to use to keep the bathrooms and our bedroom inhabitable. Not too much worry about them starting a fire actually - they are on the same circuit with half the first floor. If i use my hair dryer, or my stereo, or a breeze causes both heaters to kick in at the same time, the circuit flips. So we end up never leaving them on when we aren't here and awake. We always have to turn them off to leave the house, because I have to turn on the light and use the hair dryer and I can't do that without turning off the heaters. It is a very effective system.

Brian got home from his long haul trucking trip on Tuesday morning. He flew down from Anchorage - Ray's granddaughter was having an operation there, so he stayed and Brian flew. He started the next day at the school. He is glad the job is indoors in this weather. We are all adjusting to the hours. We had lots of practice with swing shift when he worked at the mill. He works with nice people and he has great benefits. He did well truck driving, he missed us a lot.

Alicia taught a class at the scrap book store on Saturday - it ended up lasting all day - it was a Christmas card marathon. We spent weeks preparing the kits for it. We had 7 different card styles and each person was supposed to make 4 of each card and we were expecting 6 to 10 people. (try the math on that - some of the cards had like 30 pieces to them). It was a lot of cutting and folding and punching and counting. WHEW. We will post them on the family Christmas blog - they are in the other computer. We had fun at the class. It was close friends and we had the run of the store for the day. I couldn't walk after I got home, but it was probably worth it. It was the first time I had gone out in the cold weather. Too hard on the arthritis.

then this morning, she made me go to church. I was really sore, but I really wanted to see our friends' baby blessed in church and they had come all the way from Maryland (Army), so the least I could do was drag myself down there. I was glad I went, I haven't been able to go to Sunday church for almost 3 months. I really felt out of the loop. It was fun to see the kids again, but made us all sad that we don't get to see them any more since they moved away.

Someone stole Alicia's identity on e-bay, so she has been dealing with that all week. We had just checked our credit ratings for the first time last week, so we hate to waste another check with the credit bureau, but we really would hate for her credit to be compromised. E-bay assures us it was a "contained" breech in their system and that she isn't at any other risk from it. but she had to change all her passwords on all her accounts everywhere. that took hours and now we all have to stop and lookup every password, where as before we had them all memorized. Welcome to the 21st century, I guess.

Well, that is about all our news. Oh, the single guy in our ward passed away this week (he was 73). So I don't know what the single women in the Homer area will do. Pickings were slim - now they're dead...... what are you gonna do. Looks like no grandkids for us this year...... (and Alicia will KILL me for this paragraph. She doesn't find humor in her plight as much as we do. )
LOVE< Charlotte