On New Years Eve I headed out to Nordegg. None of the girls wanted to come along this time, so I went out by myself. I've never been one to celebrate the arrival of the New Year, so it was all very low key. Mostly I hung around the cottage and watched the World Junior Hockey Championship on TV. I could see the fireworks in town from my living room window so I never bothered to leave the cottage for the festivities.
I elected to do the Dry January challenge and haven't had any alcohol since around Boxing Day. I feel energized and have been sleeping better so it is worth it to me. I'll keep it going for at least the month of January, and maybe longer. There wasn't much of a party atmosphere around me for the holidays this year...!
It had been quite cold through most of December and I wanted to check and make sure that everything at the cottage was OK. I had previously had an issue with the furnace in our guest cottage, and although I monitor the thermostat remotely, I still wanted to check that everything was OK... and it was.
I found an original glass top for my Rockola Jukebox through an Ebay seller from California. That arrived over the holidays so I took it out to the cottage to replace the broken one that I have.
On January 2nd it warmed up significantly and that evening I visited with some neighbors around an outside bonfire. The temperature only dropped down to about -4C that evening, where in the days and weeks prior we had a long stretch of -15C and colder. At times it was much colder, approaching -30C without the wind chill effect factored in. On Saturday the 3rd I helped the locals do a flood down at the rink. It was pretty cold that morning... about -18C with 98% humidity. That evening we had the weekly shinny game, and it was still pretty cold. This was my first time skating since the staples were taken out of my leg. It was a little sore and raw, but it felt good to be back on the ice, less than a month after my surgery.
There is hardly any snow around Nordegg. There was a dump of about six inches when Ryan and Braeden and I drove in out mid December. But a warm spell after that saw most of it disappear. Since then there has been virtually no new snow. Quite the contrast to Edmonton. I heard on the news that Edmonton received 72cm [over 28 inches] of snow in December. I certainly don't have that much in my yard... probably only half that amount... and am a little skeptical of that claim. But the wind blew some away, and it settled somewhat, and there was a little melting. All the city folks are whining about poor service on the part of the City of Edmonton in removing snow from the streets. These are the same people that complain about taxes being too high. I would just as soon see the snow removal kept to a minimum. Once they run the graders and snow plows through it just creates big windrows on the sides of the road making it difficult to park. It would be better to just let it get packed down, and then maybe just blade it a little to get rid of the ruts. Of course that won't happen. The City will cater to the whiners, and our taxes will continue to go up.
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