Winter, Illness, and Books!

The rain is washing away much of the snow, but also turning the packed snow on the driveway and paths into a sheet of ice. Whether that goes away also, or freezes into a worse sheet of ice depends on how soon the rain stops and it turns cold.

My cold seems to be getting better on the fourth day. I had to run my wife to a doctor appointment this morning (together we managed to keep her upright on the ice), then stopped at the Veterinarian’s on the way home to see about getting Lucy looked at – she has started favoring and licking her back feet, which are turning reddish brown between the toes, and her eye is running. The grandson just had a bad case of pinkeye, so she probably caught that. The foot problem may be irritation from the road salt that covers everything. Got an appointment for tomorrow.

I hate this time of year because of all the sickness and the health problems always going around. The grand-kids pick them up at the “germ factories” (schools) and spread them around to the family. They are totally over them two days later, but they drag on for weeks with us!

I have been reading a lot due to the weather. Presently I am reading “The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley”. Previously I read “No Cross, No Crown” by William Penn and “George Fox, an autobiography”. I also sandwiched in five or six sci-fi/fantasy books for light reading, “Democracy and the Will to Power” by James Nelson Wood for ideas to use in a sermon I am writing, and “Memoirs of a New England Village Choir” by Samuel Gilman, the last suggested by a researcher I have been in contact with as Town Historian concerning early local church splits. The last was overly wordy but amusing as little has changed in the last 200 years except for the styles of music fought over!

There was a big earthquake in Alaska earlier today and they put out a Tsunami warning, but evidently nothing came of that. Reno has been having a swarm of smaller earthquakes for days. The government shutdown is over and they are back in business – anyone miss them? Well, maybe our neighbor who works for the NPS.

I haven’t written lately due to the cold I have been suffering through and because all the electronics (smartphones, computers, etc) are sucking up our limited data allowance. I wish they would stop the endless updating – you update apps one day and they need to be updated again the next. Having Win 10 Pro I can control when and how the computer updates, but not all these other devices. Videos are another annoyance – you can usually block them from playing, but not from downloading, everyone puts up videos today instead of text – even when the video is just a talking head – and they really devour bandwidth.

Have a couple of days now I have to work in the Archives, then finish my sermon, and hopefully I will be able to get back to this blog and the second part of my series on corruption.