January 5, 2014

Thank goodness...the holidays are over with!  I took advantage of what is becoming a rare warm day this winter to take down all the Christmas lights outside just before New Years and took the tree down several days later.

I went to Joan's for a few hours on Christmas Eve which proved to be a challenge as I could not get into the Jeep as it was frozen shut and I dumped Jim's basket of goodies all over the driveway.  Some of  the glass canning jars broke and I had to re-do his.  Then I could not keep the door on the Jeep closed because the latch was stuck.  But after getting that working again I was finally off to Joan's.  Christmas Day I spent at home just taking care of a bunch of things and then watched a movie.

New Year's Day was a real challenge and possibly the most difficult trooping event I have ever done.  We had experienced a fairly sizeable snowfall starting New Years Eve and it was still coming down New Years Day when I headed to Lincoln Park Zoo for the Polar Bear Plunge at North Ave Beach. 


It was cold, windy, and snowing like crazy.  I got to the Zoo around 10:00 AM and waited for the rest of the members of my costume group to arrive.  We suited up at the Zoo and then when everyone was ready at around 11:20 AM - we started to walk to North Ave Beach about 1/2 mile away.  It was a challenging walk with the driving snow and high winds.  The Lake was frozen over this year and only a hole was cut into the ice for the people to plunge into.  We stayed at the beach for probably an hour and a half.  We got interviewed by Channel 5 and Channel 9 news and posed for photos and generally froze.  I did handle photo chores for a couple girls who went into the water. 

We then walked back to the Zoo and suited down.  The weather was still crazy when I left as the snow was still coming down worse than earlier in the day.  It was a long ride home, but not too bad.  All in all...quite a start to 2014. 





Yesterday we had our annual FPDWC Resource Management meeting.  It was disappointing to see that there were no new faces.  It was really just the "Usual Suspects".  I shoveled snow when I got home from the meeting as I knew more snow was on the way today.  It was warm yesterday by comparison of what it is supposed to be the next two days.  Record cold is coming this way and it snowed again last night.  I will probably head out when it gets light out and shovel again move the Jeep and plug in the engine block heater.  With the really cold weather, I have been going through gasoline like crazy and a great deal of my paycheck is going into the gas tank.

The 21st Annual Frozen Butts Workday is coming up on January 18th and it would appear that I will be having the Pot Luck here at my house so today I start some massive "spring cleaning".  I need to tackle the incredible amount of paperwork that I seem to accumulate on my kitchen counter all the time.  I also need to do some serious dusting and general tidy up of the place as I will need all the room I can get my hands on to accommodate people.  I will need to also rent some tables and chairs and I think I found a really local place to do that.  I also need to tackle clean up of my computer.  Usually at the beginning of the year I transfer all of the "stuff" I have accumulated in the computer to one of the flash drives. 

So....Happy New Year and I certainly hope 2014 is better than 2013 - but somehow I don't think this will be a good year and it certainly is starting off pretty bad in the weather department.