Baby Sat.

We're supposed to be warming as we head into the weekend, but that's a cold morning out there. Snow frozen hard again, ice in the driveway, and a cold, cold building. Still: I like the idea of having to warm it each morning instead of running the little through-wall all night every night. Maybe someday I'll spring for the fancy heat pump. For now: layers and kindling and a hat and firing that stove as hard as it'll go and the wee ceiling fan up there in the peak of the roof to spin it all around.

I am this morning a brand new man: AMR and I did go to dinner and the movies last night. Alone. Without the Toad. Try that one on for size, friends and fans of parenting. And a word of advice: try it on before seven and a half months. We should have done this long ago. Long, long ago. I'm happy to see the melon-headed man this morning. Don't get me wrong. I am. But I was happy not to see him last night.

Updates? The same, the same. Snow cover. Squirrels in the building. A halfassed plan about this last third of the book. This Friday is not vastly different than any other recent Friday. Weathervane on the steeple back there says the wind is coming out of the south and west. Not much cloud. Cold. Mid-January. Some kind of warmish wet thing (50 degrees?) on tap for early next week. We'll be most likely gone over your Saturday-Sunday, in keeping with the new station plan around here, but we'll see you Monday to start your work week, Gate City. Keep it buttoned up out there, and buttoned down.