Lots of wine

I am going through a wine-drinking period and boy are the wines good! Most of them Spanish. I've tried Malaga and port for the first time and I recommend both. Malaga tastes literally like fluid raisins while port - a fine ruby I am currently drinking - tastes like the mildest of kirsch - a gentle but rich cherry or berry taste. Exquisite! Very strong, too, 19% alcohol. Don't be fooled into drinking half of a bottle in one standing 'cause man you're going to look a drunken old sod the next day at work ;-) It's not easy to stop, though, especially if you sip them slowly in front of the PC or TV, like me.. So sweet and warming! I'd say it's safer to drink them if you have company.. hopefully they'll persuade you to stop once your speech becomes blurry ;-)

I love the traditionally shaped black bottles, too. I haven't thrown away any yet.. I store them in my pantry in the hope of filling them with some sort of an equally delicious fruit syrup in the summer.

Having inspected the bottle shelf, I can tell you that this fall and winter I've gone through five sherry amontillado ("Piconera" by Bodegas las Urtas at El Puerto de S-ta Maria, 15% by vol.), one golden sherry 15% by vol. ("Don Pablo" by Bodegas Bellavista), one Malaga Dulce 15% by vol. (Quitapenas Malaga Vina with bright red cap) by Bodegas Quitapenas and one fine ruby port 19% by vol. by Westport I've actually just opened this evening.

Yummers all of them, Malaga best to pour over ice-cream while the others perfect on their own as aperitivos. Don Pablo appearing a sherry of lesser quality which I do not intend to purchase again (unless I become an alcoholic), if you don't mind, messieurs - or senores - manufacturers ;-)

As for non-fortified wines which tickled my fancy, I also drank two random bottles of Merlot, one semi-sweet Australian (Cudgee Creek, as encouraged by the previously drunk Merlot by Jindalee.. I was pleasantly surprised to discover both brands came from the same producer/family) and one semi-dry from the Veneto region of Italy. The latter perfect to accompany pasta, not so much as an aperitif.

Ten bottles alltogether in a several months' period. That's a lot of wine for (the innocent little) me.. and all by myself!

I'm enormously tempted to buy even more wine when I see store shelves filled to maximum capacity before Valentine's Day.. I mean where have I been not having tasted all those gorgeous wines before? The white port, the cream Osborne sherry, the sweet Sauternes, the Gewurztraminer - along with the Greek Metaxa and the long forgotten Southern Comfort - are all there waiting for me! I can't believe how greedy I've become for them!

I can't really afford any of them either, mind you. I've just read my gas meter and, well, I've used four times as much gas during the last - winter - months as I had used during the summer. This translates into a bill almost four times as high.. which I can't possibly pay even though I've been saving towards it from each of the last three monthly salaries. I can only pay abouth two thirds of that bill, splitting the outstanding amount between the three "summer", or non-heating period, bills of May, August and November. The latter marking a beginning of a new heating period, in fact. What can I say but "be grateful that you can still pay them"?

Spring! You are anxiously awaited!! I've planned my first vacation days this year at the very end of March, right after we switch to daylight saving time. I can't wait for the miracle of light.. as if it could cure.. or make everything right. Or more bearable.

More snow

We are currently buried under almost two feet of snow. I haven't seen so much snow in years. Today was the second morning in a row I had to shovel it from the sidewalks adjacent to the property. It takes two hours to accomplish that and boy does it make me sweat.

It's not supposed to snow anymore in the coming days and I so hope the forecast comes true - some sun and frost down to -17 C. However they've kept postponing the frosty days since last week, when they were first forecast for "tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, as well as the rest of the week". We are still waiting - snow shoveling meanwhile..

New Year's day

I spent the first forty minutes of 2010 with my cats in their room. They had never seen fireworks and were a bit scared of the noise, especially the younger female. She hid in the dark underneath a bed between the bed and the wall and I could only see the pupils of her eyes shining green from there. Her two brothers were a bit braver but the mother seemed worried as well. She left her spot on the styrofoam box by the window and only returned there when I entered the room and began talking to them softly and reassuringly. I was so glad to see she felt safer at the sound of my voice! I stayed and talked to them until all the firework noise ceased. At the return of silence the young female almost immediately emerged from her hiding, and we all returned to our normal activities of that time of the night, that is, we soon went to sleep.

Upon waking up this morning I saw about three inches of snow on the ground and it was still snowing. I think I must have shoveled for about three hours. But I got everything done - the sidewalks on both sides of the property, the driveway and the path to the house. While it's not snowing anymore and it even looks like the snow is thawing, we have frost forecasted for the rest of the week, going down to as low as -16 C. It's certainly better to have those heaps of snow out of the way before they freeze.

Sunset

I slept through much of this sunny mid-February day because I'm still fighting a cold from a couple of days ago. Taking aspirins three times a day, calcium, vitamin C and throat candy. I'm not going so far as to turn on the heat, though, so I decided to stay warm in bed instead.

I woke up just before 2 p.m. to discover blue skies and bright sun shining through my bedroom window. I took it slow from there, washing up and deciding how to get through the rest of the day without going outside to get some food (I'll be eating rice and chicken, there's also some couscous, barley and milk left so I should be fine). Then I watched the colorful sunset through my west facing window.

4:20 p.m.


4:30 p.m.

Pretty, wasn't it. I rarely get to see it because I work evenings and it used to be cloudy and grey - but warm - in the past week anyway. Tomorrow's supposed to be sunny as well, unfortunately, sun will come at a price of -4C / 25F during the day and -13C / 8F at night. The sunny, cold weather is forecasted to continue throughout the rest of this week.

Garden in snow

garden this morning

Midnight in snow

neighbor's fence



my street

Awaiting spring

potted argyranthemum

End of January

The garden last Friday. Sun was out and there was no trace of snow left. The below 0 F temperatures only lasted for two or three days of early January, then it began to get warmer and warmer every day. Friday was in the 40s F. Today is a bit colder again, with some snow and wind but we're still in the 30s. Nowhere near the freezing, snowy winters from a couple of years back. I manage to have the heat off for up to twenty hours a day.

I had a little side job at the beginning of January, merely eight days but I got quite exhausted. There was no weekend break, I worked eight hours every day from Sunday to Sunday, and the commute time was three hours a day. I was fine during the first three days but by day seven I almost prayed for the job to end. I had to take sleeping pills on the two following nights because I felt so stressed from fatigue that I wouldn't be able to sleep well. Even though I then had three days off my regular job, I feel like I am still picking myself up. The good news is that the job will generate about 33% extra monthly income.

I also went food shopping last week and bought an incredible amount of meat. I don't know what came over me. It might be that I hadn't been eating too well in December because money was tight and I was continuously feeling a bit hungry. I bought two whole chickens, over two pounds of beef and a pound of each ground turkey, ground pork and pork belly. In total, more than eleven pounds of meat. Only when I started loading my refrigerator and couldn't fit it all in it dawned on me that I might have bought too much. I decided to cook and freeze most of it. So far I'm done with the ground pork (see the recipe for Chinese spaghetti), pork belly and beef, of which I made a delicious stew with gravy. I'm noticing that I've already put on some unnecessary weight.. so it's rather the winter cold than actual hunger that's making me crave those hearty, meaty meals.

Seriously freezing weather

It's been freezing for the last couple of days. Last night and tonight the termometer outside my house window showed -22 C/-7 F. Hopefully tonight's the last night of such a freaking cold because I have to keep the central heating on for hours and I hate to think how much it is going to cost. I'm really pissed off by those temperatures.

I never miss winter

"Can't wait to leave this 70 degree weather (I'm wearing a short sleeve shirt) and arrive home to 20 degree weather with snow. (...) I've actually missed Connecticut" - says Bill, packing to leave the sunny New Zealand. Alistair expressed the same sentiment last year, I think, when he actually cancelled his winter stay in Brazil after four days and returned to the UK because he couldn't stand the summer season.

I don't know. I cannot help thinking to do something like that is a sign of aging, both physically and psychologically. Like neither your body nor your psyche can accomodate a change in the cycle of seasons they've grown used to. I've never actually travelled to the tropics in the very middle of winter so I havent't had that very experience. But I did spend a week in the Canary Islands around the end of February, which is winter here, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Did not miss winter at home one bit. I mean how can you miss winter in the middle of summer? Very short hours of daylight, low energy, snow shoveling, heating bills, muddy streets and even slower traffic instead of sun high up in the sky waking you up at 5 a.m., high spirits, green pastures and garden work? I don't get it. I would gladly move to spend the rest of my life much, much closer to the equator.

No winter as of yet

Wow. People are already having a hard winter time. A tree through the roof! Boy am I glad there are no pine trees next to my house. Pine wood appears to be very soft and prone to damage. My sister actually had the entire top of a large pine tree break off during a storm last year at the farm. It must have been at least three yards long. It landed on the roof of a shed but miraculously there was no damage. I only have a large poplar growing close to the house - and I think poplar is very soft wood, too - but since the house has two floors the tree doesn't really tower over it. I'll have to take a close look tomorrow to make sure it doesn't need to be trimmed.

Nothing is left of the snow in my garden and I'd gladly not see it again. We're enjoying dry weather with temperatures around 0 C/in the thirties F. I actually intend to water my potted roses.