Christmas Eve

Nothing noteworthy to report really. Just a couple of things I might mention...

After our "incident" involving the wood stove, I bought three brand spankin' new smoke detectors and a new carbon monoxide detector.

They are all installed in strategic locations throughout the Ferretnick abode and we both feel much safer now. (We still aren't drying wood on top of the stove, however)

I did cook a yummy stew on the wood stove, though. I put a bunch of veggies, rice, barley, lentils, chicken and pork sausage in a Dutch Oven with some chicken broth and tomato sauce. I mixed in a few spices and let it simmer all day on top of the stove.

It was D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S! And it didn't use any electricity to do it.

I haven't driven my car since Wednesday last week. so the snow keeps piling up on top.

I brushed it off on Saturday morning and started it to let it run and get the engine going.

Then it snowed again and buried the car that night.

This is what my car looked liked on Monday morning around 5:30 a.m. after I had brushed the snow off on Saturday.


This is the back-end of the car. Take a good look 'cause it's important to what happened next.

Yesterday, I brushed off the snow again and started it up.

Everything started out fine, so I went into the house for a minute while I let the car run.

I came back outside a couple of minutes later and the car had stopped. "Huh, weird", I thought.

So I tried to start it again but it wouldn't turn over. Tried it again... no luck.

I did it about 5 or 6 times but the car would not start back up. I started smelling exhaust fumes and thought, "I'll leave it for now and try again tomorrow".

So this morning (as we were leaving to go to town for Christmas Eve breakfast) I started my car again. It started right up, and then it dawned on me what the problem was yesterday.... I hadn't cleared the snow away from my tailpipe.

The snow is over 2 feet deep.... my tailpipe sits only 4 inches off the ground. All the exhaust was trapped under the car, and the snow was preventing it from venting properly.

I brushed it away and have since then had no problems.

Sometimes the easiest answer is right under your nose.

Today we went into town to have Christmas Eve breakfast with our neighbors.

Then we walked to the grocery store and the post office before coming back home.

At the grocery store I took these pictures on my phone:

It's the end of the world! Get chips!

(Oddly enough, there was still plenty of milk, bread and eggs)



A festival of meat for the Holidays

(No Hanukkah Ham, however)

I hope everyone is warm and safe and dry.

Have a good Christmas and I'll be back soon.