Happy 2025, fellow readers!  I hope you all had a great holiday season.  I know I did.  The flurry and busy schedules of the holidays are now over, and we’ve been slowly taking down the Christmas decorations (the worst job in the world) and returning the house to its “normal” state (which always looks so empty for the first few days).

Anyway, this post is about January.  Now, I don’t want to know about your soon-to-be-failed resolutions.  I can lie to myself just fine without you, thanks.  No, I’m here on an early Sunday morning (retirement is everything I wanted it to be so far, by the way) to talk about the weather.

It’s cold out.

I mean really cold out.

The thermometer read 18 degrees at my place this morning (with a windchill of 7) and the forecast for the next week or two is barely into the 30’s during the days with teens at night.  As you can imagine in an almost 100-year-old house, that means there are some rather chilly spots in my abode.  With the door closed, my pantry can easily double as an extra refrigerator.  One room in my basement can be used for hanging meat, and the attic is where I could leisurely hone my ice carving skills.

I’ve got a small heater in the basement to keep my washer pipes warm – just in case (I’ve seen what kind of mess can happen if the drain pipe gets frozen up the hard way), I’ve got fat, cloth bumpers over the doorway sills, and my fake fireplace (with a small heater) is adding not only ambience, but extra firepower to my electric baseboard heat.  I’m sure the Potomac Edison meter reader is going to do a double-take when he stops by for my monthly bill reading.

What’s that Mr. Weather Man?  Snow in the forecast for Monday morning?  I guess winter weather really is here – at least for a while.

Good thing I don’t have to be out in it anymore. 

I’ll be watching from my warm living room in the morning, sipping coffee while I watch the neighbors clear their cars of snow and ice to go to work.

That grin on my face is from something else, honestly.

Stay warm, friends!