5:30 AM. My iPhone proclaimed one degree Fahrenheit. Was it above or below zero? I honestly don’t remember. I can dress for my Skunk Walk at that temperature and walking was wunderbar this morning! For whatever reason, the radio kept saying things like minus 10 or minus 12 or even minus 15. Not. Well, maybe it was down at the Planet Ann Arbor airport where it is often significantly colder than everywhere else in town. I work down by there and the trees *were* frosted in that area but it didn’t *feel* like minus 10 when I got out of my vee-hickle at work. Or maybe they were reporting the wind chill? I reeaalllly reeallly wish that, when they report the temperature, they state clearly whether it is the wind chill temp or the absolute temp. I actually don’t really care what the wind chill is. If it’s windy, it feels colder. That’s plain old common sense. We need more of that in this world.

Anyway, I felt another little hint today. You know the kind. Where you suddenly see kayak rides and pontoon boat expotitions to the tiki bar (and moe-skee-toes and ticks (YICK!)) in the future. I felt the first hint of this over the weekend. Did I blahg about it then? I don’t remember. We are not done with Old Man Winter yet and won’t be for a while but I wonder how many more below zero Skunk Walks I will have to bundle up for. Oh well, if we do have more of those mornings, and we probably will, I am ready for them!

Didja know? Did I tell you? I am getting LED light strips! I am so excited! I am getting them under my cabinets. I love this. I have no fewer than FOUR (count ’em) clunky old fluorescent tubes underneath my current cabinets. I am not a huge fan of bright overhead light. I like natural light from the outdoors — that’s why I always keep my big wooden front door open when I’m home. After dark, I like low lighting except where I need to see. I like wee little LED xmas-style lights. I like being able to read stuff on my laptop / iPhone / iPad in a dark room. The lighting of the future. I will have some other overhead-style lights for when they are needed but I am so happy to get rid of the fluorescent thingies and replace them with LED. If I had renovated The Landfill Chitchen 20 years ago (or maybe even five years ago), LED anything would probably not be an option. I wasn’t even thinking about lighting all that much. Although now that I think about it, CKL did ask me about it and I talked about it rather articulately. For me.

And I am getting rid of the “box-work” or “soffets” or whatever the heck you call them everywhere and on the north side of the chitchen, I will be able to put pretty stuff on top of the cabinets for display purposes and string little LED lights along them. Old glass vases and things from The Commander’s house and fancy liqwire bottles that the GG bought back in a blueberry liqueur-making phase. He is always doing something. Today it was shoveling snow. Alas. We did not get more snow today (thank you god) but the plow came by and plugged up the end of the driveway. I schlepped the Frog Hopper up the driveway after work and then headed to the Plum Market, planning to shovel out the plow-plug when I got home. But I fergot! Sorry.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 12th, 2014 at 6:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.