Happy New Year's Day!
Well, as it turned out, it was only the second snowiest December on record in our area. Only a very little bit more snow [which we are expecting today] would have broken the record. Richard feels that after shoveling all that snow, that it should have been a record-breaking December for snow. However...
The strange thing is that the snowiest December on record was in 2000. We were here for that whole month as well, but don't remember it as having that much snow. 2000 is not that long ago, after all. December 2000 must have have had a different snow-pattern...i.e., a few heavy snowfalls instead of the many multiple smaller snowfalls that we've had about every two to three days all the way through this December.
We are now into January, and this kind of weather [snowy and frigid] is very much to be expected in this part of the US--Wisconsin--so it now ceases to be a local topic of conversation. The expectation is that one is supposed to 'suck it up', or move. This is easier for Richard [who was, after all, born and raised in New England], but harder for me [who was raised in a variety of (more, or less) southern Atlantic seaboard states].
The really nice thing about our area, is that if you get stuck in the snow [or whatever], people will always help you. Our favorite story along those lines is something that I [Perri] witnessed during our snowiest season of all--in the blizzard season of 1978-79, which paralyzed Chicago and didn't do Madison any good, either. It was New Year's Day and I was looking out of one of our second-floor windows at some poor soul in a Volkswagen Beetle who had gotten really stuck in a mammoth snow-drift. All of a sudden a jeep came by, stopped, and [it looked like] six or seven members of a football defensive line poured out of the jeep. These hefty guys surrounded the Beetle, and with a 1-2-3, picked it up and put it in the middle of the road, where it was able to drive away. Amazing!
As we wrote about in a previous post, Soot, one of our three cats had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure [if you remember, the bad news was that we had to give her several drugs twice a day for the rest of her life, but the good news was that, if properly medicated, she should live out her expected lifespan]. Well, to begin with, we were not too sure who was more upset by the twice-daily drug administrations, her or us. However, with experience, some tricks, and some adjustments with the vet to replace some drugs she absolutely detested with others that she tolerated much better, things are improving. In a year or so, we expect to have the whole thing down to a science, and Soot, if she still doesn't like being given the meds [and she won't, of course--she's a cat, after all], will at least have become resigned to the whole thing. *sigh*
Here's hoping that everyone's 2008 is a good one, and that everything that can get better, does, and that everything that can't get better, at least becomes more tolerable!
Peace, Perri and Richard
The strange thing is that the snowiest December on record was in 2000. We were here for that whole month as well, but don't remember it as having that much snow. 2000 is not that long ago, after all. December 2000 must have have had a different snow-pattern...i.e., a few heavy snowfalls instead of the many multiple smaller snowfalls that we've had about every two to three days all the way through this December.
We are now into January, and this kind of weather [snowy and frigid] is very much to be expected in this part of the US--Wisconsin--so it now ceases to be a local topic of conversation. The expectation is that one is supposed to 'suck it up', or move. This is easier for Richard [who was, after all, born and raised in New England], but harder for me [who was raised in a variety of (more, or less) southern Atlantic seaboard states].
The really nice thing about our area, is that if you get stuck in the snow [or whatever], people will always help you. Our favorite story along those lines is something that I [Perri] witnessed during our snowiest season of all--in the blizzard season of 1978-79, which paralyzed Chicago and didn't do Madison any good, either. It was New Year's Day and I was looking out of one of our second-floor windows at some poor soul in a Volkswagen Beetle who had gotten really stuck in a mammoth snow-drift. All of a sudden a jeep came by, stopped, and [it looked like] six or seven members of a football defensive line poured out of the jeep. These hefty guys surrounded the Beetle, and with a 1-2-3, picked it up and put it in the middle of the road, where it was able to drive away. Amazing!
As we wrote about in a previous post, Soot, one of our three cats had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure [if you remember, the bad news was that we had to give her several drugs twice a day for the rest of her life, but the good news was that, if properly medicated, she should live out her expected lifespan]. Well, to begin with, we were not too sure who was more upset by the twice-daily drug administrations, her or us. However, with experience, some tricks, and some adjustments with the vet to replace some drugs she absolutely detested with others that she tolerated much better, things are improving. In a year or so, we expect to have the whole thing down to a science, and Soot, if she still doesn't like being given the meds [and she won't, of course--she's a cat, after all], will at least have become resigned to the whole thing. *sigh*
Here's hoping that everyone's 2008 is a good one, and that everything that can get better, does, and that everything that can't get better, at least becomes more tolerable!
Peace, Perri and Richard