cold

After a weird winter season, we finally have snow, accompanied by bitterly frigid temperatures.  With the wind chill factor, the temps outdoors are in the double-digits below zero.  For a couple of days it was more than minus-40F.

The snow last weekend was wet and then dry and kept blowing all over the place.  The sun came around for a few days, melted some of what was on the sidewalks and roadways and the winds froze it. 

My plan was to travel south to get rid of the rest of my stuff (even if I had to stay overnight on the sofa bed to get if finished), but the highways were chock full of crashes, including one that closed the whole system for nearly ten hours.  That one was south of where I needed to go, but the interstate system between here and there was insanely blocked and virtually unavailable.  Fortunately no one was hurt, but there are a lot of people with some pretty pricey vehicle repairs in their immediate futures.

So, I took the opportunity to try to unsnarl my retirement insurance benefits and the advantage insurance plan I set up last November.  Yesterday I was on the phone for more than four hours, most of it spent waiting on-hold.  Today was better, only two and a half hours, and I finally landed with someone who really knew what she was doing and she sorted all of it out and I am set to go and someone is your uncle.  Nice.

Frankly, one of the reasons I have stuck with this retirement insurance company is because they are unfailing courteous, respectful and will do anything to help.  I am sure that many people have this experience with their insurance providers, but it is not common amongst my fellow old babes. 

Anyway, I am so glad to have unlimited everything on my cell phone, so worrying about minutes and data resources were not a part of just hanging around, reading and occasionally glancing at the television, having tea and fruit and with no responsibility for doing anything useful around here.

I am impatient to finish at the old flat, having sorted out everything that was in the first trip up here.  The only things still in boxes are waiting for the next...and last...trip which will have all the bookcases and shelves.

I will be wasting tomorrow, except for shoveling the snow that is supposed to arrive overnight, then coming back upstairs and having hot cocoa and toast for the rest of the day.  Bliss.

I am down to one book and will be fetching a few more when I get to the library later this week.  I have missed more than a month of Saturday morning coffee with my little friends, and even if it stays bitterly cold, as long as the roads are passable, I will go meet then this week.

In the three weeks here I have lost enough weight to buy a blouse and jacket two sizes smaller than I have been wearing.  I guess my hopes for better fitness trudging up and down the stairs is beginning to pay some dividends.  I had thirty dollars/US gift thing to spend last weekend, before the snow hit the fan, and because everything is on after-the-holidays sales, I was able to buy two expensive items that I would never have ever considered, and a pair of gloves for only fifteen dollars more than the gift thing.  Nice.

I am breaking my insane desire for fizzy beverages, especially diet sodas, by drinking pitcher-filtered tap water.  The water here is supposed to be good, but it tastes ghastly, and the pitcher is helping.  To be honest, I have tried to break this habit many times.  Yes.  I have.