Negatively Cold

I didn't write about the extreme cold yesterday, mostly because I didn't really experience it very much.  A few days after we returned from our North Shore adventure, we jetted off to Florida to visit family and only returned late yesterday evening.

Open field habitat in a Florida state park

And although it turned cold yesterday in Florida too, their hard freeze is nothing compared to how frigid it was when we returned home.  It seemed even worse than it actually was because we didn't take any cold weather gear on the trip south.

On the jetway from the plane you could see your breath.  There was a line for the taxis and everyone tried to stay away from the open door while waiting because the outside was just too darn cold.

When we got home, the heating pipes hadn't frozen, but the cold water at the kitchen sink wasn't running.  Some time spent heating the pipe with a hair dryer (the only thing we ever use it for) got the water flowing again.

Luckily for us, we won't have missed all the cold weather, because the below freezing temperatures are hanging around today too, just for us!

Today should be a good day to hang around the house and get stuff done here.  I'll probably drive my honey to work so that he doesn't get frostbite riding his bike, visit the library, and then spend much of the day camped out in the warmest spot in the house, right next to the radiator.

Stay warm and stay safe!  Expect tales of my warm southern experiences for the next few days . . .

Fundraising

I finally matched the donations some of you made to my nanowrimo fundraising site, as I promised.  This year, the organization has raised over one million dollars for writing programs for young people and adults.  With all of your help I personally raised $820.  Thank you so much!

Fundraising was hard to do.  I had to ask my friends and colleagues for financial support.  Granted, it was for a cause dear to my heart.  However, since my cause was a cultural one, I felt a little guilty.  There are so many other worthy causes, and somehow it seems to me that many other causes are, in fact, worthier.  Homelessness, the suffering in the Philippines, hungry children . . . the list goes on and on.  Helping people (even young people) to write their own novels?  Sure seems like a first world cause to me.

And it turns out, I'm not too far off the mark.  A recent article by Robert Reich (an ex-Secretary of Labor) claims that $33 billion of last year's $39 billion of total charitable deductions (as listed on our tax returns) went to the richest 20% of all American institutions.  The kind of wealthy recipients Reich mentions are operas, museums, symphonies, as well as elite schools and universities.

Now, I know that many of those organizations support the non-wealthy, just as nanowrimo does.  It still seems like not enough.  So what is enough?

I'm not sure but, I pledge to take some time this month to decide what causes that help the poor I want to give money to.  I promise to read more of Robert Reich's writing, and watch his movie Inequity for All.  I'd like to find out what works to reduce poverty.  I also need to figure out how much money I would like to earmark.  It will be at least as much as I donated to nanowrimo last year.

If anyone out there has any ideas for me, let me know.

NOTE:  I do not mean to diminish anyone's contribution, including my own.  I am happy and proud that people I know donated their hard-earned money to nanowrimo when I asked them to.  These are just some thoughts I had after reading Reich's article.

Gichigami

Lake Superior is quite beautiful in all seasons.  It is the largest of the Great Lakes, although its name in English comes from the French for upper lake, as it is located above the other lakes.  It can be quite placid or very stormy, with large waves.

Unfortunately, around most of its shores, it is too cold to swim in, even in summer.  It is great to look at, though, at any time.  In the winter, the spray from the waves freezes into ice at the shore.  When it gets really cold, the shallow waters of the lake near the shore also freeze.

In the early mornings, the sunrise over Lake Superior is breathtaking.

We enjoyed spending some calm vacation days on the North Shore.  I know we'll go back, but I sure wish I could swim in the lake.

Puzzle Dust

There's something to love about a new puzzle.  There's the ritual of setting up a special table with comfortable chairs.  Opening up the box and then the bag inside.  Trying to get the pieces out of the bag while leaving the fragrant puzzle dust inside.  Sorting pieces and looking at the shapes and colors with a critical eye.

A new puzzle is a new start, an introduction to hours of happy concentration. My favorite kind of puzzles are copies of famous art.

Although I don't celebrate Christmas, I do still get gifts.  This year, my Mom bought a 1000 piece puzzle of Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night. Score!

Although the art is challenging (lots of blue) and the pieces are oddly shaped, I hope it won't take too long.

What's more is that I have learned that not only humans love puzzles . . .

Snow, Trees, Sky

Here are a few of the photographs I took on our trip to the frigid north . . .  more to follow?

Fallen trees make a nice horizontal table for the snow.

The close-up lens on my camera has stopped working,

but I think you can get an idea about how much snow 

one of these evergreens can hold on to.

Some sort of animal made deep tracks in the snow.  

Deer?  Rabbit?  All I know is that those aren't bear tracks!

The sun came out and splashed my shadow on top of a snowy river.

Toilet trouble - hotel style

A few days after the solstice holiday, my honey and I went further north to a resort on the North Shore of Lake Superior.  (We wanted to be even colder!)

The visit started out well, but took a turn for the worse on the very first morning.  What happened?

The toilet overflowed.  Reception was called, the maintenance guys came out, and after a number of hours of banging around, this was the result:

Yes, they had to move the toilet from its spot to try to snake the sewer line. Although first, they had to use a wet/dry vaccuum to clean up the toilet and the bathroom floor.  The problem?  Ice.

They brought up some chunks of ice to start, but eventually decided to try to use a steamer to melt the ice in the line.  Amazingly enough, we hung around this entire time, listening to them make noise and smelling the pungent sewer odors.  (We were waiting for it to get warm enough to go skiing.)

The head maintenance guy decided to move us at about the same time as the plumbers were trying to decide if they had cleared the sewer line. Even though they decided they had been successful, we moved rooms anyway. This was probably a good idea, especially after we learned that this had been an ongoing problem with this unit.

Our new unit was not quite as nice, didn't have the same quality of furniture, and was in the middle of a row instead of at the end, but the toilet worked very well.

Interestingly enough, management never acknowledged the incident in any way.  I kept expecting a gift certificate or a coupon to the restaurant or at the very least, a "We're sorry that the toilet didn't work and we inconvenienced you."  But no, nothing.  Maybe it was because we were in one of their cheaper rooms, I don't know.

Whatever the reason, I guess we'll be checking out other resorts on the North Shore in the future.

Happy New Day!

"We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet . . ."

Robert Burns 

January First.  The beginning of the new year.  A new start.  A brand new day.

But couldn't every new day be a new start?  And couldn't we take and give a cup of kindness every day?

According to Shakespeare, sleep knits up the raveled sleeve of care, so when we wake each morning we have a fresh chance to look at our lives.

I know in actuality that this is difficult to do, because we need to get up and shower and feed the cat or make coffee or complete whatever daybreak routines we have.  Who has time to reflect on what they want the day to bring, or think about what kind of person they would like to be?  But it seems like a good idea to be able to start over again more than just once a year.

To resolve to be nicer, eat less, drink more, and shovel out our sidewalks as soon as the snow falls instead of leaving it there because it's too cold and it makes us whiney just thinking about going outside.  And if we fail to be our best selves on any given day, we can give a cup of kindness to ourselves, drink it and start over when next the sun rises.  At least, that's what I'm going to try to do for the next  365 days.

Thanks for reading my philosophizing.  It sounded better in my head than it looks on the page.  Of course, that is often the case.

But now, I'm off to drink some kindness in a cup, so I want to wish everyone a . . .