New Year's Day

Overcast, calm winds
30 / 34 degrees
Snow cover has drifted, varying from ten inches to two feet...

I stopped by The Rum Locker on my way home from work last night and picked up some Spumante. Town was very quiet, very little traffic. The mood wasn't as somber at that of New Year's Eve 2001 but I wonder if the horrific loss of life from this past week's tsunami hasn't cast a pall over the usual excesses.

And this *is* a rather quiet little town in its own right.

It was wet and in the upper thirties--pools of water on top of the packed snow...a decidedly "Pacific Northwest" feel to the night.

Denny had finished making up the turkey soup I started from last week's turkey. I had a bowl after I had fed the cats--it turned out pretty tasty. I was planning to take the tree down while waiting for midnight to come around, but Denny talked me into spending the time with him instead.

We lay on the bed and watched the two television sets, Letterman on one and Leno on the other. They delayed Leno so that his countdown to midnight would correspond to actual midnight in the Alaska time zone--an attempt to make us feel included. I popped the Spumante and poured each of us a glass and we toasted the new year together.

***

I still haven't taken the tree down yet though I can't keep Lola penned up much longer. I had gathered the balls of yarn from yesterday and put them in a plastic bucket, but she had found enough balls of yarn to have another macrame surprise for me this morning. I recalled that Newt actually had kicked a couple of the yarn balls out of the crochet box but she only displaced what she needed to make a space to sleep. Newt had much more of a sense of decorum than Lola has--and more than any other cat, Newt seemed to strive to understand what it meant to be a "good kitty", what it was we wanted from her. Lola probably doesn't willfully try to misbehave--she is just too much energy in too small a package. Punkin, on the other hand, has never had *any* interest in being a good kitty. Any attention is better than no attention at all.

Anyway, I emptied the crochet box and sealed its contents in plastic litter pails so Lola will have to find another way to get into deviltry.

***



The redpolls have shown up en masse over the past week. I thought they were pine siskins until I got a closer look and spotted the distinctive red cap. One news story says they are showing up in town in great numbers because much of their usual wintering area burned this summer. I am keeping plenty of sunflower seed outside. The cats find this most entertaining.

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