The girl dog loves the snow

The weather folks told us there would be some flurries last night, the flurries started around 7pm by 8pm there had to be an inch of “flurries” on the ground and this morning there is around 3 inches on my deck.  Guess where the snow shovel is, not on the deck.  The dogs love the snow and I am enjoying my coffee just setting here looking at the winter beauty. I am lucky, I have my warm wood stove and my cozy cabin with big windows so I can enjoy that beauty in comfort.  Of course the dogs and I will have to walk down to the barn to get the shovel. 

When President Nixon signed into law the national 55 mph speed limit it was meant with a lot of resistance.The law was meant to help ease the fuel shortages that were happening in the 70's and decrease the incidence of highway accidents. I know I have a fondness for 60mph and I enjoy that 70mph out there on hwy 81 but for the past few weeks I have been experimenting with my personal gas consumption. This is the World Wide Web so I won’t go into detail with my driving habits but I compared my normal driving habits with driving the speed limit and not going over 55.  The results have not been phenomenal but there is an improvement in my gas mileage. I drive a Jeep wrangler and around here in the mountains I have been getting 17 to 18 mpg. Slowing down has increased that to 18.5 to 19 mpg. As I said not a phenomenal improvement but that is a 5% increase in fuel economy. It takes less than 5 minutes longer to get to work and at 55mph a Wrangler is not as noisy by a long shot as at 60-70mph (interstate 81) so I save a little gas and am more relaxed when I get to work.  Will I always go 55, probably not, sometimes I will have to use the interstate ;-) but I will slow down when I can that 1 extra mile a gallon saves me about $3.00 a tank and since I fill up on average every 5 days that about $220 a year.

It seems that every few weeks a fright train of weather breezes by leaving just enough mixed precipitation to cause trouble then it goes a way and things warm up again.  We had a wicked wind with a mix of rain & sleet last night and now as I write there is a light snow falling.  It will be an interesting drive to work. 

Today it is quite cold and windy.  Today is one of the first truly cold days of this winter season making it a good day to reflect on another year that has gone by. I sit here at my computer watching the sun light up the bark of bare trees and the chickadee’s scuttle about unaware of the lurking cat looking at them from the porch step.  It looks cold outside but it is beautiful and I am thankful to have this view.

This past year has been a busy one; trips to the beach, the mountains and to New Orleans highlighted this year.  There were also many short excursions to places near by but equally fun.  I am very fortunate to have good friends that don’t mind me tagging along on their adventures and who don’t mind tagging along on some of mine. I did not get much done on the homestead this year but there is always next year.

Next year being this year I think I will concentrate more on the home front.  I will stick closer to home.  I do want to take one trip to Florida to visit a dear friend for a few days and I do have to go to the beach at least 2 times this year but other than that I will keep my adventures very close to home. 

Happy New Year.