Tomorrow starts a fresh new month! But that's getting ahead of myself. Today it is still January, for a few more hours. Grey, bitterly cold January.
How did I do with those goals? Pretty well.
The bad news, the walking. I only made 26.24 of my 31 mile goals. The reasons for this are obvious to me; we were really sick for a week (see the .15 mile day when I was counting walking out to feed the geese damn it) and had two major snowstorms. It's not the cold that bothers me, but when it snows a LOT the sidewalks in town get cleared as much as people can be bothered. So, I would have to cross the street at least once for every block, zig zag around and use my cleats to walk on icy slate sidewalks. Also, my husband has gone back to teaching and it is still dark after dinner. So what has been decided is that we will be getting one of those $300-ish folding treadmills that only weigh 50 lbs and can fit under the sofa. Keeping things in perspective, the goal for the year is 365 miles so it will even out.
Globes! I did two!
This one which the kids dropped and needed a LOT of repair work and this one:
This one only needed cleaned and the globe re-set on the base. After getting some Facebook advice and taking a close look at the countries I was suprised to see this only dates back to the 90's! The base fooled me! I love it.
Reading. Folks, I read THREE books this month. That has not happened since I had children. The last book of the month ended up being this:
This is not my copy from growing up but one found at Goodwill (aka our small town bookstore). My goodness , that was such fun. It's lucky for my husband that I waited until now to re-read this childhood story or I would have lobbied HARD to name one of these children Charles Wallace. As an adult, oh, the terrible decision making by adults that go on but, whatever. Any story that actually starts with "It was a dark and story night" is going to be a winner. I mean, imagine your 12 year old self reading this:
It's a keeper.
There are other things to report on but I'm pretty pleased with this month. February will be about fixing my typewriters and getting them in working order, finishing the Tom Hanks book Uncommon Type and walking 28 miles. The typewriters will be fun to tinker with. My oldest Royal could use another cleaning and the bell doesn't "ding", the newer 50's one needs cleaned and the keys look waxy like the plastic has off-gassing, it also needs a new ribbon.
After those typewriters are working and this book is finished, the month will end with me sitting down at one of the machines and plinking out a letter explaining how his book caused me to cry, like a baby, at a preschool swim class. Thanks a bunch, Mr. Hanks.
Tomorrow I'm going to try making French Onion soup, something we haven't had in years. Lots of soups here lately for lots of cold weather.