Jan 1 - smart parents evacuate

... not really, but we're down to 4 adults, 5 children and 1 dog. We're outnumbered !

Stef and Aaron left first, getting ahead of the rainy weather moving in, leaving Kylie and Lauren with us. I left shortly thereafter, heading to Mass in Britt, but of course I came back. David and Kim left after I got back, leaving Megan with us. Sara and Jeffrey are still here ... Sara joked "now's our chance, let's leave" ... but of course that would never happen.

Sara, Jeffrey, Emma and Chase will head out on the 4th (Wed); we'll take Megan, Kylie and Lauren home on either the 5th or 6th. I'm shooting for the 6th day trip; Sandy's shooting for the 5th, overnight at David's. We have one car, since Sandy's has not been out in the snow and salt, so we'll have to compromise somewhere !

Today was a wet day, but that didn't stop the kids from having a great time outside. When I got home, they were outside making a snow family -- 4 snow people -- in the area at the end of the driveway. Later they were sledding. Still later I took out the 3-wheeler and pulled them on the lake. After doing my good deed, I ran across the lake with the machine, hitting some slush of course -- Aaron and I found that yesterday -- and returning along the bay shoreline, avoiding the slush.

Late in the day as I looked out of the basement door one of my flags popped, so I ran out and pulled in a good-sized pike. It's big enough for a meal all by itself plus we have the two from yesterday, three meals all together. So far so good !

We had wet snow on and off all day but there's actually no accumulation. Tonight it's supposed to dip to -7C and tomorrow night -22C, so we'll be back in the deep freeze soon.

522 was a bit of a mess driving to & from Britt but 69 was bare and wet. 522 was actually better before they salted and tomorrow, with the freeze, will be even worse. I'm not sure that there's enough salt to contend with a deep freeze.

Internet service has been so-so, but it's ok now. 5:36 p.m. at the moment, I'll complete this blog tomorrow a.m.

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I was up at midnight and the temperature had barely dipped. Now it's around 20F and they are forecasting an even deeper freeze for tonight, would you believe -24C / -11F with "feels like" at -29F. Now that's cold !

We had veal stew for dinner, "Sandy's Famous" ... if George was writing this blog. It would only be famous, however, if she made it more often :). It's very good. Lauren didn't want to eat the onions even though they were water chestnuts ... ha.

Sleeping arrangements somewhat over the place. Emma has been sleeping in Stef & Aaron's room except for the night that they were here, when she slept on the soft foam single (courtesy the Davies) on the floor of Jeffrey & Sara's room. The other four kids slept downstairs. Last night, however, that changed with Lauren and Megan sleeping upstairs in David & Kim's room; Kylie and Chase sleeping in the basement bedroom. At least that was the plan ... I was in bed before they were.

At dinner, I commented that the "kids" now outnumbered the adults and Kylie objected. I set the definition as "3rd generation" and she was ok with that. Had Jason and Lorraine been around, the "kids" definition would have been 2nd generation ... but hey, you go with the flow. The 2nd generation is now the adults and we're just older.

The tree is still up. I broke with tradition and didn't spend New Years Day de-ornamenting the tree. Today or tomorrow ... we'll see. Today will be a good day for outside activities; tomorrow could be brutal out there.

Oh yes, I did do some fooling around with a 500gb disk drive that I've got here. It's a full size Seagate disk, was in an external Rosewill eSata case. Trying it in two machines w/o the external case, couldn't get it to be recognized even though I could feel it spin up. I checked the Seagate website and found that it's still under warranty, so here we go again.

Onward ... system status green; signal strength 33/34 ... marginal. Perhaps this will post ...