Bitterly cold this morning. The temperature is still around zero - actually reading -4 degrees on the front of the house where there's some weak sun, and 10 below outside my office at the back side of the house. There's also a gusty wind. I checked it as 1 m.p.h. while I was outside reading the snow gauge, but I'm watching gusts off the roof that seem to be much stronger. I still haven't ventured down to the mail boxes to take a wind reading there, although I suspect it's cold enough now so even the ice isn't slippery. I'm not going to test it, though. It's cozy here by the fire and being outside just for a few minutes earlier was plenty for me. We got an inch of new snow bringing the total depth on the ground to 13 in.

I won't bore you with a lot more of the nightmare inducing Delta Airline fiasco, but the latest is that the bags never left JFK. Yep. Still there. We were apparently fed a lot of garbage by people who either didn't know what they were doing or who didn't want to deal with the problem. Now we're told they'll be on a flight to Johannesburg this morning. Yeah, sure. A friend of Diane Rossi's had a very similar experience with Delta and her bags were actually returned home - never reached the destination. We are foolishly still hoping, but the prospect of them ever reaching Namibia gets dimmer by the hour.

Bill and Monika are happily on their way north to Oshakati. It sounds as if a host of Monika's relatives will be congregating at her mother's for the holidays and to greet Monika, Jo-Ann and Bill. Monika said it would be a big party with not only relatives showing up but friends and neighbors and their friends and people she doesn't even know, but everyone will be happy to celebrate with them. For days.

It'll be a very Merry Christmas, I'm sure.