Jan 3 - a whirlwind moves through

This went much quicker than expected.  By the time I left for Mass, 9:45, the tree was down and outside.  When I got back from Mass I vacuumed the carpet and packed up the ornaments.  Ladders and tools were put in the basement.

Having the tree so securely tied 2/3 up made this easier.  That said, the slowest part of the job is always removing the tinsel.  It's now packed away for another year.  I don't think that you can buy this stuff anymore.  Tinsel and ornaments off the lower reaches, I used the ladder to clear the top and then cut off the top 7-8'.  Sandy commented that for most people, that section would have been a perfect tree !

Using the hand snipers, I then removed branches to the trunk all the way up and then tossed the pile of branches and the trunk out onto the deck.   Later on, Cassie and I made a pile of those down by the gazebo for removal in the Spring.

As you might imagine, the carpet was covered in spruce needles.  The shop vac did a good job on that and I then rolled it and the underlay back to get at any strays from when we put the tree up.

It's so much brighter in the room with the tree gone !

In the meantime, the cleaning whirlwind was at work.  Sandy stripped beds and washed sheets on all but two beds, albeit king beds.  She also vacuumed throughout and washed all the towels.  The place does need dusting, but that will wait for Spring.  Baby gates and high chair were put away, leaving the Cassie-gate of course. We'll dispense with the Cassie gate when we get back in the Spring.

Misc toys were organized and found their place.  A toy bucket was missing, couldn't find it anywhere, but a call to Lauren solved that mystery.  Emma had been using it in the snow and I found it under the spruce trees by the driveway along with Sandy's orange touque that Emma had been wearing at the time :).

I defrosted the freezer, easy to do when you can simply put all the contents into a storage bin and move outside.  I let Sandy put things away again and discard some frozen leftovers while she was at it, like turkey from last Thanksgiving.

Theoretically we would have been ready to leave today, Monday, but had that been the plan, we would have felt rushed.  As it is, we'll get packed up today and I will move a few things into the car, anything that freezing won't hurt, that is.

We found a few leftovers as we cleaned, and even before the cleaning started.

I'd followed Jeffrey out to 522 as he left shortly after 6am and when I got back, Sandy said that he had left the baby monitor.  Thankfully with no leaves on the trees cell phone service is better along 522 and I called him and he waited for me to bring the monitor to him.  We found a couple more of his things later on, e.g. a pair of slippers, which we'll put in the mail. 

David left something in the fridge; Lauren left her snow boots; the current plan is for us to meet David tomorrow at Innisfil and the 400 on our way south.  Stef, Aaron and Lauren will be at a dentist appointment in Oakville as we pass through on Tuesday, so we won't see them.

Sandy roasted some coffee; we're in good shape for the trip.  She now needs to empty the upstairs fridge/freezer and we both need to pack.

We plan to take a slightly different route south for variety, following I90 west from Erie PA almost to Cleveland, south on  I271 and then join up with I77 at Akron OH.  That means that we'll bypass SR19 from I79 to Beckley WV.  We'll stay overnight just north of Akron, which is about an 8 hour drive from here, and then again at Orangeburg SC.  We have some errands on the way out of the country -- something to return to Canadian Tire and a couple of grocery items to pick up -- so it will still be a long day. 

The car has to be packed on the day of departure and it takes me a while to do the winter close-up, prepping toilets and traps for freezing, just in case.  We leave heat on; the antifreeze is just a precaution.   I would also prep the clothes washer and dishwasher if I really expected a freeze.  The generator will be turned off !

It's cold out there now, the thermometer showing -3F / -20C.  Cassie didn't spend much time outside when she went out to pee.  She's lucky this trip - we saw -38 Christmas before last.  Since -40C = -40F, I don't bother qualifying -38 with the scale.

The low speed fan on the furnace is always running, circulating air through the house, but with only three of us giving off body heat and the cold outside, the wood stove doesn't quite keep up.  I hear the furnace occasionally cycle on, maintaining 68F in the house.  Google tells me that people put out about 330 btu's per hour, so if you figure that there were 10 of us, counting Cassie, for the last week, that's 3300 btu's.  We also put out a lot of moisture as we breathe, so when it's cold outside, the air gets quite dry. 

We had a couple of Tarini Pickerel meals in the freezer that we didn't touch so we had one of those last night.  I expect that we'll have the other tonight.  It doesn't keep all that well.  With no walkable ice on the lake, we didn't catch any pike. 

I'll go into town today for mail; I'm expecting TD Visa card refreshes, nothing else really.

That's about it.  Onward!