I hope everyone has enjoyed the first day of the New Year - I'm sure some of you wish you'd had a little more sleep and perhaps a little less to eat and drink, but hopefully everyone is safe and recovering from whatever excesses you may have indulged in.

We didn't make it to midnight - no spirits involved, but we did have a heartier than usual meal last night and that always makes me sleepy.  However, today I realized I've misplaced my internal calendar.  We often have Bush's baked beans for supper on Saturday nights, and Fred was surprised when he came into the kitchen tonight and found beans were on the menu.  All day long I've thought this was Saturday.  We're expecting friends for dinner Sunday evening, and I was thinking this afternoon I should have done some advance food preparations today and have been feeling a little guilty that I kept putting it off all day.  If it hadn't been for the beans tonight, I would probably have cooked everything tomorrow and wondered why nobody showed up to eat.  This sort of thing happens to old folks and retirees, I've heard.  

Here's something that's been puzzling both Diane Rossi and myself:  there is still open water along the eastern shore of the pond.  This picture was taken on Dec. 30, but today Diane told me it was still open along that shore.  She thinks it could be because there is more wind on that shore.  That makes sense, but it also seems to be in the vicinity of Sunken Island, and that makes me wonder if there is more current there for some reason.  I guess it doesn't matter - it will all be closed in soon because in the next few days the temperature is going to drop dramatically to real winter readings.

That means it will be quite a bit colder for the men working on Shelly Walker's place here on West Shore Road.  That is still pretty open.  As you can see, it's progressing well - lots of unusual angles on the road side of the structure and at this stage it's difficult to tell what the finished product will be like, but on Wednesday when we came by they were hard at work, so should have it closed in soon, and I can't wait to see it without the staging and looking spectacular.

In the village, the Joe's Pond Country Store building is taking on a new look.  There are all new windows in the front, and it looks like the attached building north of the main structure will be turned into something useful, too.  We still haven't contacted the Stinsons to find out what the plan is for a business there, but will try to do that soon.  It sounds as if it will be a cafe, plus perhaps some other type of business.  There's quite a lot of space available on the ground floor.

One other thing - I was worried about the possibility of a couple more appliances or machines breaking down when my copier/printer failed this past week.  I completely forgot that not long before that our microwave quit working and we had to replace it.  So that's two down and perhaps one more to go.  On the other hand, the bulb in the overhead light in my office blew last week, too, and while that doesn't seem to be in the same category as the other two failures, it did pose quite a problem because the globe is too small for most of the energy efficient bulbs to fit, so we had to get a new globe, and although it was "standard" size, our fixture has a quirky metal ridge that wouldn't accept the new globe . . . you get the picture.  Fred was finally able to force the new globe on without anything breaking, but I doubt it will ever come off without our breaking it like a piggy bank.  The energy efficient bulb is supposed to last a really long time unless there isn't sufficient air space and/or it's left on too long, so I'm hoping we won't need to deal with it for a while.  I really hate when this sort of stuff happens, and while it may seem like a minor inconvenience to most folks, I think it qualifies as a third household unit breakdown and therefore I'm not expecting anything more to fail.  I'm keeping Cousin Ora's remedy to break the spell in mind, though.  At least all of that happened in 2015 and I can and will expect 2016 to be trouble free.   We got the new printer/scanner set up today and it's working very well, so the year is starting off well.  Now if I can just remember what day it is . . .  BIG sigh.   Happy New Year, Everyone.