I have a couple things for you today. First - we made a slide show of our trip into St. Johnsbury yesterday. We always combine our errands, so we did banking, grocery shopped, got haircuts, filled the car with gas, picked up mail in W. Danville - that's the usual routine. We go into St. Johnsbury every two weeks, so we are pretty busy getting everything done. We were struck again by how much less snow and general winter there is in St. Johnsbury. This is usually the case, but you'll see the difference in the photos. Here they are: Slides

I had forwards this morning - same thing from two different sources - about all the money Microsoft is giving if people will just forward the e-mails to their friends, etc., etc. Thousands of dollars handed out to everyone who does this. I've posted something about this hoax before, but I thought it is worth repeating. When these things come to you - dump 'em. Don't even bother. You KNOW it's either a harmless (except for clogging the internet with useless e-mails) prank or it's someone trying to get names for their address lists to send out more spam or junk. When you receive something like that and you think it might have some truth, check it out. It's easy. Here are some of the sources I use: hoax.slayer.com, urbanlegends.com, snopes.com, truthorfiction.com. There's another method I've found often works, just Google search using a few key words from the message. Quite often something will show up - often on one of the sites I mentioned above.

I read in the Caledonian yesterday about the problems here in the north country getting propane. There are several things making it difficult, not the least of which is the weather we've had that makes transportation difficult, but there are other factors, too, and folks need to conserve all they can so this fuel source doesn't run out in this bitterly cold weather. Lots of people heat with propane, and it will be very serious if dealers begin to run out.

I overheard a man who is in the wood supply business saying yesterday that the bottom has "dropped out" of the wood business. Probably when the price of oil went down. Most folks already have their wood supply, but lots of us want to keep a year or two ahead so it will be seasoned by the time we need it. It's amazing how many industries are subject to a trickle-down effect of the sluggish economy.

On the other hand, apparently the folks working out the problems on the rail-trail here in the north country are counting on some stimulus package monies to help keep that project going. According to the article in the Caledonian, a fair share of the original grant money awarded has been lost because of delays in the project. It's a good project, but I can't help wondering how it will stack up against others like new roads and bridges.

If anyone is wondering if today is any less snowy than when we took the pictures yesterday, all I can say is yes, there isn't much snow in the air today, but there's no sunshine and the thermometers are sliding downward again. It was in the mid 20's yesterday, but right now only about 22 degrees. By tonight it's going to be below zero again and worse Saturday night. Darn! Still no January thaw in sight.