Pretty cold today, all day. I don't think it got out of the single digits above here even though there was beautiful sunshine most of the day. Tonight I believe it's going to warm up a bit and maybe we'll get a little snow, then over the weekend we are expecting to have a lot of snow dumped on us. Could be a foot and a half or two feet, if the forecast is right.

We had to go to Berlin today - I had an eye appointment. I had been getting a shot in each eye on alternate visits, but back in November I had both eyes done at once and then was able to skip December. My vision has been great all these weeks and when tested, both eyes were as good as they'd been in the fall, so I was hoping I wouldn't need a shot at all, but then when he said he was going to do both eyes, I wasn't really surprised. It's a "maintenance" sort of thing, and goodness knows, I'd rather have the double shots than lose my eyesight. I have had "double shots" that were a heck of a lot more fun than today's, for sure.  It really isn't all that bad - I'm getting used to the whole thing after four or five years, but it messed up a lot of my day. I don't have to go back until March, so it's a small price to pay. I'm fairly back to normal now and actually got in some work on the book late this afternoon. 

One of the things we always notice when we have to take Route 2 west is how awful the road is. It is pretty good as far as Marshfield now that the new stretchs by Goodrich's Sugar House and past the dam are finished, but boy, it's rough from there on. I hope some of that can be worked on soon. It's not only full of potholes, some of the curves between Marshfield and Plainfield are really treacherous. I've always thought it is too bad we don't have a much better east-west highway. That route gets a tremendous amount of travel every day.

I know it's a little premature to be thinking about maple sugar season, but really, it won't be many weeks now. Once we get into February, the weather SHOULD begin to warm up and things will thaw out. Even though it's early to be thinking about spring, it's still really nice to daydream a little, especially when we're battening down getting ready for another blizzard and blast of cold, right?

If you are reading this somewhere in our north country, do be careful in the next few days - stay warm and safe. If you are in some "non-frozen" region - I'm sorry you are missing all the fun here! Just now I checked the weather in Anchorage, Alaska, where our friends are and it's 24 degrees and mostly sunny right now. My thermometer is reading 5 degrees. I guess that is unusual weather for this time of the year for them, while ours is really about normal. Seems like there's usually a cold snap during January. Then again sometimes in March.