Not A Lot to Do When It's This Cold

Today is just too cold to do much today. It feels like 7 degrees with the wind chill. Washed a load of clothes. Went outside and ran the “95 Ford for about 20 minutes and drove it around the neighborhood. Every dip or bump on the street made the frame scream in agony. It sounded like the body was going to start to rip away in the wind. Yesterday, when I was warming it up the heater wasn’t working very well. Today I tried the defroster. It worked much better. When I switched it over to heat, it was still not working very well. Since I only drive it short distances anyhow, that shouldn’t be a problem. It just reinforces the need to begin to look for a new car. We’ll replace the 2008 Saturn Vue and junk the Ford. The Vue will become my car. The wife gets the new car.

            While the car was warming up and before I took it for a drive, I spent time in the garage looking for a book. I had read “The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis last year and thought I had put it in the garage. Now that I have made a section for books by him and Tolkien, I wanted to include it. I can’t find it. I either missed it in the loft or I mistakenly gave it to the library. I’ll check the loft again later today.

            As I said, it’s just too cold to think about much to do. It’s warm in the house, but it’s a mental thing. I’ll do some reading, and then try to answer some of the questions for next Tuesday’s book group meeting. The book is “Endurance” by Alfred Lansing. It should be a great meeting. The questions are very good and will definitely create quite a bit of discussion. Whoever has chosen the book for a particular month is responsible for coming up with the questions and leading the discussion for that meeting. Sometimes questions come with a book in a Reader’s Guide at the end, usually in the paperback version, but sometimes one can find them online. Sometimes, you just have to make your own up. I don’t know where these came from but they are good ones.

            I also have a paper that was written by an ex-cadet of mine when he was in high school, and now is a brigade commander at Fort Bragg. He wrote the paper when he was a student at the Naval War College and it is being published. He asked if I had time to read it and give him my comments. I haven’t been in this world for quite awhile but will give it a shot. Actually, I’m very interested in reading it. This young soldier - he’s about 43 now but still a young man to me - is a full Colonel and will make the general ranks soon I’m positive.

            And I need to catch up on the rest of my reading. I got behind on my Inklings book about Lewis and friends but did do that this morning. I also started the 1776 book, but none of the others yet.

            And I didn’t exercise – that’s walking right now – but maybe I can do that as well. Did I say there was not a lot to do today?

(This was typed in font Book Antiqua 11)