Dec 25 - a quiet Christmas

It's our choice; celebrate Christmas when everyone is here. 

With a cold start at -22F, the day then warmed up to the mid teens.  This morning it's 20F, 42 degrees warmer than yesterday !  It's a heat wave !

We celebrated Christmas by decorating the tree.  I do the lights first at the upper reach of my ladder.  Then we maneuver the underlay and carpet under the tree stand as the worst of the mess is behind us.  I then do the first round of ornament hanging and turn it over to Sandy who fills in any holes, rearranges some of my ornaments and applies the tinsel.  When we take the tree down, we reclaim that tinsel -- we've had it for many years.

I also hang the lights in the loft and now, for year two, in the kitchen.  A post and beam construction provides many places from which lights can be strung !  We're all lit up at this point.

It's time to wrap presents -- that will be today's task.

I pulled in another pike, that makes number four.  The pike is wonderful and, of course, fresh.  It's in stark contrast to the stuffed rainbow trout that we had for dinner which, quite frankly, had spent too much time in the freezer.  Fishy tasting fish is what puts many people off of eating fish.  Already cooked, we ate it.  Can I say that the green beans were excellent ?

I took a walk down to Jim and Bonnie's.  Jim has a thermometer on a chair just inside the door.  It was reading 48-49, a good power conservation temperature but not very welcoming when they arrive on Monday, according to their plan.  I've volunteered to warm the place up.  I cleared some of their walk but not all as it was windy and I expected that it might just drift back in.  It won't take long to do it before they arrive.  Jim cleared ours for so many years that I'm indebted forever !

Walking on the ice to J&B's was quite easy as there was, at most, an inch of snow.  The only place that I encountered any slush was right at their boat ramp.  The cold is doing it's job making ice for sure.  I walked down to Troup's as well just to see if they were in but, as expected, no.  They usually make it up here after Christmas; we'll see. 

We're burning a lot of wood.  It's great wood, from Halle, could almost be kiln-dried I've had it so long.  It burns faster as a result and throws a good heat.  Nevertheless, I've left the furnace set at 68F and it comes on occasionally with the extreme cold.  At today's temperature, the fireplace will heat the house.  Once the gang is here, it won't even come on because people throw a lot of heat and moisture.  With just the two of us the humidity is running around 30% but that will change with the gang.

I'm not sure if my back-of-the-house woodpile will last our stay here.  We've used half of it already and we've been here about half of our intended stay.  With David and Jeffrey here, I might bring down a few loads from the woodshed.

We heard from Bonnie and Pam yesterday; Bonnie got a Surface tablet for Christmas.  This will be great for her, as the iPad is for Sandy.  They have a problem with it though because the setup password was either messed up when entering or lost when they postponed completing setup.  It doesn't want to do a factory reset.  I walked through it with Pam but no go.  Hopefully she had more luck after I got off the phone.  The next step would be to call Microsoft or do an exchange ...  

Stef called; Jeffrey called with Emma on the phone; Zoe sort-of on the phone; Arlene called; I left a voicemail for Philip wishing him a Happy Birthday, whoops Merry Christmas -- how I wish that I could restart that voicemail !!

That's about it.  I'll put out the fishing rigs again today and we'll have the pike for dinner that I caught two days ago.  At least that's the plan.  I may run into town for gas, we'll see.  That depends on whether the Home Hardware is open but I may leave that plumbing purchase for tomorrow's planned trip to Sudbury ?  We'll see.

At this point it looks like we have a staged arrival of the kids -- Jeffrey late on the 27th; David late on the 28th; Stef on the 29th.  All of this is weather dependent but there don't seem to be any big snow-dumps on the horizon.  Flurries here and there in the forecast, which usually means an inch or so.

Onward ...