Another cold snap has arrived!
And snap is a very appropriate noun. Just now the deck “snapped”, it emitted a loud cracking noise. This happens when the wood suddently and violently contracts. On nights this cold you can often hear the trees themselves snapping in the cold.
We roasted a turkey today, so the oven was on for several hours, which augmented the heating system. We burned a fire in the little wood stove downstairs, for several hours, and have completed two firings of the masonry heater. The temperature in the living area is over 22C. We are hoping this heat will carry us through the night. It is supposed to drop to -27C, but I think it may get much colder than that, as it is only 9 p.m. and the temperature has already dropped to -24C.
Tomorrow night we are expecting a colder night, then the weather should “warm” up a bit.
Harriet and I had a good chat this morning. Attila’s Mom gave us a call to wish us Happy New Year. We received eGreetings from friends and family. Terra sent us a picture of herself and Lares on New Year’s Eve, Luna sent greetings at midnight.
Attila and I spent a quiet day, cooking, Attila toting wood and building fires, drying laundry in front of the masonry heater, and watching a bit of Netflix. We are watching the Midsomer Murders series. I usually find the theme of murder quite distasteful. But for some reason I am enjoying this series very much. I wonder if it has anything to do with the context, rural England, where many of the affluent live; sort of like where we live. Wealthy and affluent rural people killing each other, which is what most Midsomer murders are, usually as a result of avarice and greed, doesn’t seem to bother me very much. There are so many murders that Midsomer will probably be totally depopulated by the end of the series.
So the first day of 2014 has passed peacably.
Worldly Distractions
Weather
WIND CHILL WARNING IN EFFECT
Mostly Cloudy
-24°C
Date: 9:00 PM EST Wednesday 1 January 2014
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 103.1 kPa
Visibility: 16 km
Temperature: -24.2°C
Dewpoint: -26.9°C
Humidity: 79%
Wind: NNE 4 km/h
Wind Chill: -28
Quote
“When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.”
Alice Hoffman
We owned almost all the Midsomer Murder DVDs but I gave them to a friend recently. Loved them. Love John Nettles. Did you get to view the special part about how they make that theme music with the instrument that never touches any part of the human body when played?
They have made a few more of the series but not sure I would like them as much without John Nettles.
Just FYI, have you seen the British series “Rosemary & Thyme” with Felicity Kendall and Pam Ferris? Fabulous and also in the same pretty landscape of middle England. There is a series that we loved, too, called “At Home with the Braithwaites” starring Peter Davison that is a scream – very chaotic but very good… it introduced us to Sarah Smart, who plays one of the daughters, and that in itself was worth the whole show. There are so many great British shows and we have almost all of them – have you seen “Hamish Macbeth” – also very very good – in Scotland in a tiny village…
enough. I could go on ad infinitum…
HNY again.
In the book Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice there are three main vampires. Each of them needs to kill somebody every night to survive. That’s almost 1100 people in one city per year, that nobody seems to notice are missing. You have to go with the flow. Blood flow, in this case.
Like you Bex, we really enjoy British programs. I feel there is more subtlety in the story lines, less gratuitous violence, better scripts, and the settings are not too close to home for comfort. We haven’t come across the theme music part, but will keep an eye out for it now that we know about it. John Nettles is very good.
I am aware of Rosemary and Tyme, but hadn’t hear of At Home with the Braithwaites, something to keep an eye open for surely. Hamish Macbeth, we watched the series, bought the series and have watched twice again. I really like Robert Carlyle.
I just got an email announcing that Call the Midwife episodes are now available. Thank goodness, because Netflix was a bit desperate during the autumn, so glad they have new programming available, other than violent stuff.
Yes Steve-Paul, suspending disbelief seems to be essential! Maybe that is what makes some of these programs so entertaining, the suspension of disbelief, the knowledge that “nah, that could never happen to me” and “nah, that isn’t really happening to other people.”
I think that is why I prefer inferred violence, graphic detail makes it impossible to suspend disbelief for the fully informed; real violence is not entertaining.
I enjoy intelligent and complex story lines, that do not rely on gratuitous graphic violence, they are more like real life.