First cold week of Winter.

This was the first really cold week this winter. It's been so cold that Bennie doesn't spend time outside other than potty break. Once again, the storm door on the kitchen entrance makes a huge difference as we aren't getting a gust of cold air when Bennie goes in and out and there isn't a big ice build up on the window in the door.

We don't walk Bennie after it's below -20C because we don't want his paws to get frostbite and sensitive. We've never dressed the dogs. I tried boots with our first cairn. After wrestling them on, he lost one the first time he went into deeper snow. Milo and Duffy had winter coats with hoods (an X-mas gift one year) but they looked at me with reproach whenever I put them on so... I have been doing some training with Bennie as well as playing fetch. I used the Dogo app; it keeps getting better and I'll be making time to work with Bennie while it's cold. We've been working on his coat as well - his undercoat is quite fine so it mats easily. I got him a big dog collar (Kong Rope collar) because he has lots of mats at his neck. Not sure how it's going to work out, it has some bad reviews for the reflective threads pulling apart.

Even though it's been cold it's been sunny so Fred's been keeping the snow off the greenhouse roof and solar panels swept off. In 13 days we've generated 73 kwh. For comparison, we generated 108 for all of December. Since I was an HS person and he's worked in the oil field, we got residential scaffolding from Home Depot so he didn't have to haul out a ladder to access the roof. He also ordered the handrails. M-U-C-H safer for climbing around in cold weather clothing. as well as quicker. In the summer it's going to be used for growing vine based plants as it's adjacent to a garden space.

I've been keeping warm by culling stuff out of the kitchen and rearranging drawers, cupboards and the pantry. It doesn't look a lot different but an essential part of the redo was making things visible and reachable without having to move stuff because when things get shuffled it turns into a cluster. We still use cookbooks so it's nice to have them in easy reach. In the end, I also moved stuff that I mostly use to the right side of the pantry. Turntables are amazingly useful.

Part of cold weather is checking out what's on TV/streaming or whatever. I've been enjoying Brooklyn 99. Only on season 1 but there's lots of winter left. Wandering the internet, I found out I could get a lower priced cell plan with unlimited minutes and the same data so I took it. As a long term customer (really?) I could get either $5 off/month or double the data so I got more data. I never use near my limit but I'm very leery of streaming if I'm not on WiFi. I would like to relax just a little about that. We've been tanning - risk of skin cancer is low when we only have 6-minute sessions. It warms us up and, for me, provides a little meditation time. 6 minutes is about my limit for that😁 One thing about the extended cold weather is I've gotten used to it. Today I went out with wet hair and no gloves. -10C will feel like t-shirt weather when it returns in a couple weeks.