Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

Well, the good news is the new furnace is much more efficient than the old. After a full month of having it run, a comparison of this November over last November shows less natural gas usage, like 18% less usage. And this is with running the fireplace, too. Last November I didn't have the fireplace installed, so it was just the furnace heating the house. Through this November, I used the fireplace quite a bit, so both it and the furnace were consuming natural gas. The fact the two still used less natural gas over the old furnace makes me incredibly happy. I feel like my quest to leave a smaller footprint is happening. The bad news is the price of natural gas this November is double the price of natural gas last November. When I saw the change, I was speechless. Twice as much. Seriously. This country is going absolutely insane. After lamenting all of this to a close friend yesterday, she said, "Well, I know you don't eat bacon, but it's now $13 a package, and that's...

Just three days until my Nebraska adventure! Three! And . . . and, I sold the Cherokee a couple of days ago, so I had the money to buy the telephoto lens I've been drooling over the last four years. Yeah, four years. That's how slow I tend to go when considering buying something. I constantly scrutinize if the money serves a better purpose elsewhere. Like my savings account. With the trip, though, I gave myself the gift of the lens since it will definitely allow me to get better shots of the cranes. Recently, a friend asked me why I chose to make the crane migration a must-do. Honestly, it happened as a result of a book I read: The Echo Maker by Richard Powers. It and Powers' book The Overstory  have been the best two books I've read in a very long time. Both are just absolutely beautiful. Seriously beautiful. The Echo Maker weaves together the connection between memory (rather the loss thereof) and the cranes flying the same route every year. Powers creates a ric...

In my quest to live on less, I took what I consider to be a really big step. It's kind of silly, really, but to me it is quite huge. I actually had to take a deep breath and repeat several times that everything is going to be okay in making this decision. You'd think I was jumping into the deep end of a pool after just one or two swimming lessons. I've made the commitment to not buy another book for at least a year. Instead, I will borrow any book I want to read from my college library or the city library.  There. It's official since it's in writing. To celebrate, I requested a book through inter-library loan, and I'm really excited about it getting here and me getting the email that I can pick it up at the library's front desk. And . . . I'm so excited about riding my bike to the public library to get a new library card. I haven't had one of those in probably ten years. Maybe even longer. Plus, my college now has a bookshelf in the main ha...

Each day this week the heat has closed in around 90 degrees. I have a stack of paperback books on my desk, and the humidity curls back the cover of the top book. I shift it to go underneath the second book so the cover will flatten out. I end up shifting each top book every so often throughout the day. They all end up taking a turn at having their cover curl. I finished reading The Road  by Cormac McCarthy and The Last Coyote  by Michael Connelly this week. The first is quite a fast read, and I'm not sure why I've not read it before now. I've seen the movie, but I just never thought about reading the book until a colleague brought it up recently. I truly enjoyed it -- well, not the subject matter so much, or the ending -- but rather the way McCarthy fashions phrases, offers an objective viewpoint. I found myself rereading paragraphs, sentences, phrases as I was taken by the image, the metaphor, the feel created through the words. The second book is a Harry Bosch crime n...

I recently finished reading The Yamas and Niyamas by Deborah Adele. I can't remember another book I wrote in as much as I wrote in this book. I felt like the ideas were reaching out and grabbing me by the collar, telling me, "Hey, we're talking to you." I now carry the book with me wherever I go. I specifically bought a bag big enough to put the book and a notebook in, so I can pull the book out and read it again, or pull the notebook out and write something that strikes me. This book came along in my yoga journey at the just-right time. It will go with me on my long cycling rides. I will use it to guide me as I move through my days. A part of my yoga journey has included meditation. I took a meditation class at the studio I attend, and I loved each week we met, learned more about meditation. I'm now reading Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana, and this evening, as I mused over something about myself that I am unhappy about, my thoughts turned t...

You know things are right with the world when: your friend welcomes a much-wanted, much-hoped-for beautiful addition into his family; your face freezes while cycling to work but you don't care because, well, you're cycling to work; you get a thank you from a stranger for the work you're doing for a cause you believe in; you get a note from a sister-in-law, telling you she read a book you recommended and loved it ( Driftless: one of the best books I've ever read); your significant other goes out during the middle of watching his favorite hockey team play to get you a vanilla cupcake with chocolate icing because one cupcake a day just isn't enough. Yeah, it's been a perfectly sweet kind of day.

It's like a collective holding of the breath right now. The sky has turned dark gray with snow clouds, and the weather service has issued two warnings: snow accumulation and wind chill. Looks like anywhere from 6-8 inches of the white stuff and bitterly cold winds are creeping our way. I'm all set. Got my next book underway ( Driftless by David Rhodes--loving it!), got plenty of eats in the house, and got quilts at my fingertips just in case the house gets chillier than it already is. Yesterday we had frozen pipes going into the washer, but thankfully Hubby was able to get those taken care of with no disaster happening (like the unfortunate soul who burned his house down trying to thaw out pipes by using a blow torch). I'm just hoping we get past tomorrow's arctic blast with pipes intact. Burst pipes are no fun. I'm truly thankful we dodged the bullet yesterday. Today, I peeked into my hoop house, thinking no way was there going to be anything growing, but surpri...