February Already?

“Tempus fugit,” said the Romans and indeed that observation still applies two millennia later. January turned out to be a bear of a month to get through, so next to nothing got done other than what was required. Hopefully, things will get easier as the temperatures warm and winter weather slowly departs.

That may be awhile, as I was snowed in yesterday and didn’t make it to church. Great irony could be found in the fact that I had asked to be covered for my Sunday school lesson the week before due to a forecast of snow that didn’t arrive. So of course the boy that cried wolf (NOAA) wasn’t listened to this time and I awakened to heavy drifting across our steep drive.

By the time the driveway was cleared out by a charitable neighbor, it was too late to make it. I can only hope somebody was found to teach it since I never heard back from the calls I made alerting people to my predicament.

Charity from another friend provided us with enough wood pellets to make it to our Social Security checks coming in. New front tires financially wiped us out despite the break in gas prices the past two months. Of course those are going back up now, though seeing prices at $3.00 a gallon is unlikely.

I should report on Dad’s health since it has been awhile. Despite never being able to eat solid foods again, he’s gained the weight needed with a corresponding increase in energy. This past week, he’s dipped his toe into the appliance repair pond with mixed results. It is a good sign the problems have had more to do with rusty skills and tools that have gone missing during his cancer struggle.

A doctor’s appointment for him later this week may bring news or not, if so I’ll make sure to report anything important.

Little Ragnar is growing ever bigger, charismatic, and feisty. He’s now old enough that I can safely say he’s one of the top three cats we’ve ever had, which is saying something. Smart, cheerful, and wanting to be involved in everything we do, Rags continues to be a ray of light during the winter blahs. In order to document his growth, photos of him will be appearing on the blog on a semi-regular basis.

That’s if I can get him to stand still for any amount of time. The picture at top was taken between shots of his diligently washing himself while I tried to photograph him. Given that Ragnar thinks every object in the house is a cat toy, the mission may be difficult. He is the most playful cat I’ve had the privilege to deal with, not to mention the most talkative. I’m sure in his furry mind we are having complete conversations.

Speaking of sweet felines, I’ve got Android 4.4.4 KitKat on my Nook HD via a bootable MicroSD card. The installation has quirks including not waking the screen up fully after a deep sleep, but is much faster than the stock Hummingbird OS. My main problem had been dwindling storage space on my 8GB tablet, so moving to a bootable card made sense due to how cheap they are these days. 32GB for $16 is a lot cheaper than buying a newer tablet, especially since most with equivalent or better specifications are expensive.

Not much else is going on. Making it through the winter is everything at the moment. Not terribly exciting, but we’ve had enough excitement for a good long time.