New Year's Eve. That's a huge dish of deep fried ice cream sitting in front of us. No calories there!

January 1, 2014/Wednesday

-16 degrees/partly cloudy/calm

Pentoga Road

Happy New Year! It's hard to believe that another year has rolled around and now we have to get into the habit of writing 2014 over the old 2013. Oh well, time's rolling along whether we like it or not. Personally, I like it.

Tuesday was another cold and blustery day in the North Woods. Sargie didn’t have to work so we were fairly lazy the entire day. I hoped I might be able to sleep in, but as usual, I was out of bed long before daylight getting the fire stoked and the house warm.

I spent much of the day learning the Accessible Features on this Macintosh: Dictation, Text to Speech, and other verbal commands that might alleviate me from having to use my eyes quite so much this coming semester. In an ideal world, I’d only have to turn the computer on and after that, all functions would be by voice or read out loud. It’s not quite that simple, but there are many features that can make my life easier. Stay tuned. Much of what I’m writing now is by dictation; the computer is writing as I speak. It’s not without it’s flaws, but for the most part, does a pretty good job.

I helped to take down the tree and some of the Christmas decorations on Tuesday. As Sargie said, time goes faster and it's much easier when two people work side-by-side. She's right, it wasn’t bad at all. The house looks almost bare without the tree sticking out into the middle of the living room, but it sure is nice not having to lean to one side to see the television.

 We drove into town late yesterday afternoon and picked up Mark and Sheri, then went on to enjoy a wonderful meal at a small restaurant/tavern, The Branding Iron, in Caspian. 

Yooper Brother Mark and Sheri at the Branding Iron on New Year's Eve. Check out that fifi beverage sitting in front of Mark... with whipped cream and cherries. Hmmm.

Sargie had chicken tetrazzini which she said was to die-for-good. I enjoyed a huge slab of prime rib, baked potato, corn, and a trip to the salad bar. The prime rib was done to perfection. In fact, the food was so good that Sargie said she’s going to call the owner and tell her how excellent the meal really was.

We were home early, well before 8 PM. The house had grown quite cold so I built the fire back up and even turned on the furnace for a bit to get rid of the chill.

Since Sargie has to work today, it was an early bedtime.

I'm not sure what the immediate future holds for me. I'd like to start working on next semester's classes and get those finished. 

The one thing I do know is that I need to get another cup of coffee. But then that doesn’t surprise me.

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

So are the tales from Pentoga Road…