Brrr!

So much for the weather predictions. We woke up this morning to around three inches of snow, with icy roads that, while they had been plowed, had not been sanded. It took me half again as long to get to work. And it stayed cold and windy. Probably normal for this time of the year, but a rude awakening after the mild spell we'd experienced until now.

I had a chance to test a couple of bits of wood splitting advice I got earlier in the season. One from the Internet said to use a six-pound maul rather than an eight. Easier on the body and better speed. The second was from Alan, who said that the best time to split wood was when the temperature was staying below freezing, which certainly described today.

Well, my new six-pound maul (from the local hardware store--the big-box guys only had eight-pound) and I gave it a go, and boy did it work! Pieces of hardwood from four to six inches in diameter and sixteen inches long yielded to a single blow. As Alan predicted, it made me feel like a king. And burning the wood gave me, shall we say, a warm cozy feeling.

Snow TIme For Snow

I am writing while sitting at my desk waiting for account information to load from EZPass, the automatic toll system used by many states, especially in the Northeast. While she is training, Karen gets reimbursed for these tolls, along with a mileage allowance.

It is snowing now, big fat flakes, though it is not quite freezing and so the snow becomes less like flakes and more like mush when it hits the ground. Unfortunately, Karen has to drive home in it, and we both have to drive to work in the morning.

Snow is, of course, a normal part of winter in New Hampshire. I'm just not ready for it. I've got a couple of cords of wood that my neighbor helped cut to length, but it still needs to be brought up from the vacant property, split, and stacked out of the weather. I haven't managed to mount the plow on my pickup. And I need to throw a tarp over our trailer. Have I mentioned the trailer? We have a 27-foot travel trailer. We were going to camp out in in between closing on one house and building a shell for the new one. But, of course, we have not sold the old house and we are withdrawing it from the market for now.

Fortunately, the snow will not stick around for long this time. By tomorrow afternoon it will have melted, by Saturday all will be dry, albeit quite cold. We are taking Danny, the birthday boy (he turned four yesterday) to Santa's Village Saturday as a birthday gift. Thomas will not be with us; he will be working, and then get a chance to hang around town on his own for the afternoon and early evening.

And Sunday is supposed to be another sunny day. Karen will be working, no doubt, but the day off will give me the chance to prepare for the next snowstorm--and the rest of winter. At least a little.