A man blowing his drive clear on Friday morning

December 22, 2012 – Saturday

18 degrees, clear/calm

Pentoga Road

The countdown to Christmas continues with precious few days left. It seems as though the season just began and shortly, it will be over.

I rode with Sargie a few miles towards Iron Mountain on her way to work Friday morning then walked back home. I wanted to be sure she could make it off our road. With so few homes in a several miles stretch, we’re at the lowest end of the snowplowing priority list. A blade seldom sees the blacktop within 24 hours of a snowstorm, let alone the same day.

With the Blazer in four-wheel-drive, she guided the SUV through the snow on our township road and onto the county road a mile-and-a-half away. It was further on when I asked her to pull over and let me out. As I was walking around the rear of the car, my right knee struck the trailer hitch. Someone must have put it there when I wasn’t looking. What a way to start the day.

The wind was howling in the twenty-five to thirty mph range with temperatures registering in the teens. As I later reflected, forty degrees colder and I’d have thought I was back in the arctic. I sometimes miss those days.

It was past midmorning before arriving home and I decided to tackle the computer problem. The hard drive on this MacBook Pro was at capacity and it was becoming so slow. One of the many things I like about a Mac is its speed and efficiency. Lately, those qualities have been quite rare. 

One doesn’t just transfer pictures from his hard drive to an external storage unit on a Mac. He must format the unit, hold his mouth just right, and turn around twice, all the while thinking nice thoughts. I won’t go into the details, but I will say it took several Youtube instruction videos, an email to my good buddy, Vince, in Maine, and more than one attempt to empty the hard drive.

I took over 1,600 hundred pictures and wrote over three hundred-fifty logs this past year. No wonder the old computer was acting weary.

Finally, I went into several Apple discussion groups and found a free program that would fix any errors in the computer’s registry and other places too nasty to mention. By 8 PM, the machine was once again acting like a youngster, whirling, whizzing, and computing beyond the comprehension of mere PC mortals.

Time was taken on Friday to wrap a few presents. When it comes to wrapping paper, my fingers are so nimble, so dexterous… 

In the end, the presents looked as though I’d forgotten to take off my mittens before beginning the wrapping process. The paper crumbles in my hands, the tape tends to stick to itself, and nothing ever comes out smooth and neat. I usually end up wrapping gobs and gobs of tape around the package to prevent the paper from falling off. For me, wrapping is not a pretty thing.

Why not use gift bags and tissue paper? Simply put, it doesn’t seem like Christmas peering into a bag. That’s what we do when we get home from the grocery store. Christmas morning is all about torn wrapping paper and frustrating tape that won’t let go. Besides, how can you stack bags under a tree? The litter of wrapping paper is part of the holiday season.

It was 9:30 before Sargie pulled into the garage. She had to close the Vision Center then shopped after. There were one or two presents she wanted to purchase along with groceries. It was a tired girl who walked through the kitchen door last night. Thankfully, all traces of Friday’s sickness have left and she was back to running on all eight cylinders. Needless to say, it was a very short evening before bedtime.

I’m hoping to do some ice fishing today. The ice ought to be thick enough that I should be able to get to my bluegill spot with little difficulty and hopefully, can catch enough for a meal, possibly tonight’s. The wind has subsided and it’s to be a nice day with the high in the mid-twenties. Perfect.

Sargie is off at 5 this afternoon so we’ll have an evening together. She wants to finish wrapping presents tomorrow so I’ll be doubly busy watching and talking with her while watching the Green Bay game. Sometimes I wonder how I do it. A man’s work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road…