2011-01-24-005 It is booger-freezing cold here. Last night it got down to -22.5 (Yes…MINUS twenty-two point five) but right now, middle-o-the-day, it is a balmy -9 deg. The sun is shining uselessly in a clear blue sky. It’s so cold at night that the trees pop. One night they were popping so frequently that it sounded like a warzone…or what I think a warzone sounds like. The tree-popping even wakes me up at night. Not a hard thing to do…but the source is notable. Here’s a link on ‘frost cracks’ in trees which might explain the popping…

Poor Joey’s feet freeze when he goes out to do business so he has to wear booties. If they don’t fall off, the booties seem to do the trick. If they fall off, it’s literally seconds before his feet freeze and he can’t walk. This morning the metal tags on his collar stuck to his lip. Huh? How did they even get close to his lip? Hard tellin’ not knowin’.2011-01-23-002

Yesterday I drove to the transfer station to empty the trash and then to town to fill the gas tank before the brutal freeze. The drive was like an episode of ice road truckers. It hasn’t snowed in 3 days, and even then it was only 4″. Don’t let the sand in the pic fool you. This section of road was the best groomed of the 30 miles driven. And the sand…when you’re driving, isn’t there. It seems that the plow skims just above the frost-heaves and pot-holes to create a nice slick surface with a tire-sucking berm of snow on the shoulder. You just hope a logging truck or gumby isn’t driving the opposite direction. Argghhh!