Program Note

Our Pacific Rim Bureau chief, Lynn C Dot, who also authors a personal blog entitled Chocolate Chip Mint, has opened yet another blog, Beer Here, devoted to exploring craft brewing in the Pacific Northwest U.S. and environs (Hawaii, Ohio, environs all over the place).

Follow the suds.

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We are all clear on this by now, right?

New Year's Freeze-Out: It Can Still Get Cold, Even in a Warming Climate by Bob Henson | Category 6 | Weather Underground

Indeed, some parts of the eastern U.S. are expecting bitter, record-breaking cold for New Year's Eve. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean human-produced climate change is something we've put behind us.

https://goo.gl/zsuUsv

(This article has a very cool – not to mention, in some places icy cold – map.)

Luckily I wasn’t called for unnecessary bundling

Got home from the grocery store and discovered it's 8° outside, and me in my thousand-below jacket. Way overdressed.


Tomorrow I'll do better.

Wherever you are, this might help you feel just a little bit warmer

"International Falls, the so-called icebox of the nation, plummeted to minus-36 Wednesday, breaking the previous record of minus-32 for the date."

–Washington Post

Looks like a perfect day to stay home and make soup

Here we are, survivors…

…snowed in, iced in, in fact, as far as the eye can see, with a fridge full of leftover food and football every day for a week. Maybe this old year's not so bad after all.

Not all of the games will be good but some will be terrific, and all of them have a chance to be entertaining. I saw, a little while ago, for example, what seemed at first to be a replay of that Vikings-Packers game the other night, people all bundled up looking cold, but it turned out this game was in Dallas, go figure. Maybe there's a Dallas, Wisconsin, but I don't think so.

My morning walk…

…extended from the back door of my house to the front, and even that was an achievement. Turns out, the entire known world is covered by a perfectly transparent, perfectly smooth sheet of ice. It is impossible to walk anywhere under that condition. (I only made it to the front door because I thought it would be safer to go forward than to try turning around.)

Not to worry, though. I spent all last week buying groceries so I can hold out here for a while. And I think Amazon can deliver Spam.

Plus, the ice should be gone by April.