Well, I think my funk is beginning to fade a bit. I'm starting to notice things again, some of the miracles of nature that are around me all the time that I haven't been able to see for a while. The snow is starting to melt a bit, some amazing icicles forming on my eaves now. They should grow for quite a while unless the kids decide to play baseball with them again like they usually do every year. The snow has begun a migration off my porch roof and because of the freezing and cooling it's actually made an impossible 90 degree turn so the outside edge is actually underneath my roof. This is the kind of thing that I haven't been able to see for the last few weeks, even though it's been around me the whole time. Winter up here numbs the mind after a while. When it finally warms up to above 0 on a regular basis it is like the blood begins flowing to your brain again. It's getting light for longer now, I think we're gaining around 5 minutes of light a day. It seems like last week it was dark by 4:00, now it's after 6 before the last of the light fades. I was struck by the difference in people's attitudes based on geographical locations today. A lot of my friends on Facebook that live down in the lower 48 were complaining because there was 5" of snow forecast. We've been getting snow nearly every day again and all of us were ecstatic when it started because it meant it was warm enough to snow again. (It rarely snows at -20, all the moisture freezes out of the air to fast) I think most of us up here would agree that we'd rather have snow every day as opposed to such painfully cold temperatures again. I'm always amused by the survival shows (I know, I've been going on about them lately, I'll stop soon, I promise!) When you see a nameless survivor outside in an arctic setting and he's wearing a light coat and no hat and the caption of -25 degrees comes across the screen here's a tip- It's not real. I've made the mistake of ring without eye protection at -25 and have had my contacts literally freeze to my eyes. it hurts! Everything about -25 hurts. You have every inch of exposed skin covered as much as possible, trust me! I swear, as soon as I'm able I'll be in Barbados or Maui or someplace equally as warm and pleasant as soon as the January freeze starts! Anyway, enough about the cold- It's FINALLY over, we made it through another year, tough as it was and we're starting to look forward to breakup now. My posts SHOULD start getting a lot more interesting, we have a lot of plans for hunting, fishing and camping trips this spring and summer which I'll be sharing on here. Thanks for bearing with me as I went through this last few weeks, I know I haven't been entirely entertaining, I promise I'll try to do a lot better! ;-)