We did Christmas and lived. Volunteer breakfast, Sullivan's party, solstice celebration, family lunch on the eve, dinner on the day. Sunny and cold on the day with plenty of icy designs at the shore. Melissa's Christmas Trifle was a thing of beauty. All the social time makes being quiet at home a treat. Oh year, human society designed it that way over time. Sullivan's party was like stepping into the early 2000s; I was looking at the giant tree thinking how perfectly like the past this was when David Leaming arrived in shorts and it became even more perfectly past.

Another storm, this one high wind and heavy rain, knocked power out for about 24 hours and cleared the road and the roof of snow. Again, our generator kept us comfortable. Still waiting on installation of new insulated windows on the porch.

Tech marker: smart watch. I rather like old cheap timex weekenders with a variety of colorful straps, and I'm never going to sleep wearing a watch. In fact, when I get home for the day I usually take off the watch. Melissa bought Bette's Versa 2 which didn't sell in the auction. I ordered an Amazon cheapie smart watch and some replacement bands, just to play with the tech. We'll see.

I seem to have little time to sit and read, but the two I'm working on are these. The Jemisin book seems to be a part 2; wondering if I should back up and read part 1 first. 12 Bytes is chatty and approachable, but so far not cutting edge.

I take a lot of photos of this sprig of winterberry by the dock. It's best in winter. Today is our first real snow storm, about six inches, wet and heavy. It's a pleasure to sit at home and watch and take a snow day and make a great breakfast sandwich and a second round of coffee.

We are heating the porch this year because it's our favorite place. Such a pleasure to read or watch a sunset in the comfy chairs. We are waiting for an install date for replacing the sliding door windows with insulated Anderson windows which will make it easier to heat.

Sean who lives across the street from the library took this shot this morning. I declared a snow day early. Now that we are open five days a week, we can be generous with snow days and holidays. On the library's Instagram account I only follow other libraries. There were two kinds of snow day closure posts. Bigger, institutional libraries especially in southern Maine were like "closed due to inclement weather." Smaller libraries like us were more playful and declared happy snow day type posts. At our volunteer breakfast on Friday, everyone got a bag. The bags are stamped with the logo outline and name and then kids or anyone paints them with individual designs. The top two were done by Lucky, our artist in residence. The other two are by Vanessa (left) and Cathryn who raised the bar on the whole thing by embroidering hers. The online auction, which I monitor way too closely, is a little over $3000; I'm hoping it gets to $4000 by closing time on Tuesday at midnight. It looks like we will be able to use TIF funds for the car charger grant match; and I'm pushing to use them for half the cost of the shed as well. Sustainable funding is what I might be good at; holiday parties are what I'm not good at.

One investment that is looking great right now is our whole house automatic generator. Power was out the last two nights in the storm, but we would not know it except for the blinking light on the generator. Snow is an antidepressant. Rides through the snowy countryside cheer me up from my dark time gloom. More like a semi-stupor than a gloom actually. Not much thinking happening.