January 7, 2014 – Tuesday

-24 degrees/partly cloudy/breezy

Pentoga Road

I always wondered what it would be like to live north of the Arctic Circle and still have all the comforts of home; electricity, running water, central heat, etc. Now I know.

Yesterday was spent indoors working on university classes. Both are finished and I’ll be ready to once again assume the professor role next Monday when the semester officially begins. It feels good to have all that done, but since I read all day, I paid for it dearly last night. With hurting, watery eyes, I finally quit trying to look at anything early in the evening and simply closed my eyes, listening to the television. Of course, the inevitable happened, I fell asleep, but that didn’t seem to hurt my ability to later snooze the night through.

I stepped outside exactly once on Monday in order to bring in more wood and walk across the road to get the mail. Not much excitement there.

Sargie made it to work in good shape yesterday morning. The little Kia continues to impress us both with both durability and good gas mileage. I suggested she fill the tank with gas and add Heat over her noon hour. As Dad always said, if anything negative is going to happen to a car, chances are it’ll happen during extremely cold temperatures or when it’s extremely hot. We like to keep the odds in our favor.

There was hot ham and bean soup and another pan of freshly made corn bread waiting for Sargie when she walked in the door last night. The poor girl was about frozen as she said the car never really got warm on the way home. With temperatures approaching -30 and driving directly into a 25 mph wind, it’s a wonder she had any heat at all.

I’m not sure what today will bring. Sargie works late, which means she won’t be home until 9:30. I’m going to try to get outside and do something, split wood if nothing else. Brutus seems to have an excess amount of energy in the evenings, so possibly I’ll exercise him and myself at the same time.

Other than that, I’ll listen to music, peruse the dozen or more seed catalogues that have arrived in the mailbox, and think deep thoughts.

After all, a man’s work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road…