Look who was in Iron Mountain yesterday? Clay Mathews of the Green Bay Packers. One of Yooper Brother Mark's employees was at Hardees and sent this picture.

January 2, 2014 - Friday
-14 degrees/clear/calm
Pentoga Road

I need to get up from under this electric throw and fix a pot of coffee... but I'm so warm and toasty and it seems so dark and cold out there in the kitchen. I was up during the night throwing wood in the stove and honestly, the house wasn't that cold when we got up a bit ago, but you know... I'm delicate. 

Another cold front came through yesterday afternoon and for a few minutes, there was almost a white-out.

Yesterday morning was spent working on the old pickup, getting it dug out of the snow and running. 



I also had to dig the fish shack from under a drift in the woods and load it in the truck. 

I used the side of a chisel to scrape the frozen ice and snow from the skis so it would slide easier.

Everything went well, it just took time, and after the shack was loaded, I decided to wait to put it on the lake today. With the wind howling and the temperature hovering around zero, that just seemed like the prudent thing to do.

I did drive to the lakes to check the conditions. There's plenty of ice with a bit of slush under a foot of snow; too much to attempt pulling the shack with the four wheeler. I'll do it the old fashioned way, by hand. It'll take an hour or so to get it to its final place, but what the heck, I'm retired. I've got nothing but time.

New Year's Day afternoon was spent making English/cranberry muffins... and what a process it was. First there was yeast and warm water, then flour, sugar, salt, butter, cranberries, etc. etc. etc. Seems odd, one puts ingredients together, gently lets the whole thing rise, then takes out his frustrations by pounding the poop out of the ball and beginning again. I did that twice, per the instructions. 



The dough required a temperature of 85 degrees to rise. I laughed. If we're lucky, really really lucky, we might see that sometime in the next decade. I didn't want to wait that long for global warming to kick in and the yeast to spring to life. Instead, I preheated the oven a bit, turned it off, then set the mixture inside. It worked.

After utilizing the rim of a large glass to cut the muffins from the flattened dough, I finally fried the things. 



We tried a sample last night and Sargie proclaimed them an outstanding success. I'll brag, they were mighty tasty.



Thursday evening was a quiet one. After supper we listened to, more than watched, television, and Sargie read the paper. Perfect, just as it should be.



I received word from my buddy, Vince, in Maine that he'll rebuild my MacBook Pro computer. I'll ship it at the beginning of next week. On deck for my beloved machine: a new SSD hard drive, new track pad, and 4 GB more of memory. The new Chromebook works well and is lightening fast, but it won't read to me or take dictation like the MacIntosh. It's also not too great on voice commands. I miss my breathy Australian lady reading university assignments to me when grading papers. The Chromebook will be given to Sargie to replace the old Macbook she's been using the past couple of years. I bought it, used, on Ebay, and like the rest of us, is getting slower and slower. 

Sargie's working early today. I'm going to walk my five miles then set the fish shack out on the lake. It's time to get serious about putting meat on the table. But first, I need to crawl out from under this warm blankie and make a pot of coffee. If only you had my life.

But then as we all know, a man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road... 

The large emergency pile of wood covered by tarps, lies deep beneath this cold January's snow.