13 Thursday: The Big Chill
1. On the first day of the New Year my computer said this: 2010/01/01. The big decision was whether to call this New Year “two thousand and ten” or “twenty ten.”
2. Out for the benefit concert for our friend Wolf Cherrix on one of the coldest nights in Virginia history, my friend Jayn and I were talking about our woodstoves like lovers we left at home. “Are you thinking about your woodstove right now like I’m thinking about mine?” I said to her. We were both wondering if we’d have to rebuild the fire when we got home.
3. Either a boyfriend or a baby, I thought to myself when I heard my husband Joe tell someone that we’d been nursing the woodstove all day.
4. I’ve gone from calling the cold spell we’re in “New York cold” to “Arctic Cold.”
5. It’s humbling to see how much wood it takes to keep a house warm in a week of frigid temperatures and I feel guilty about the trees that are giving their lives to keep me warm, especially when Joe was away for 5 days and I was heating the house just for me. I guess those who don’t heat with wood can’t see the effects of their heat source as directly as those who do.
6. “Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.” ~Henry David Thoreau
7. I often work on more than one story at a time and jump from one to another. Recently, I typed a sentence in the wrong word document and the world of formal writing and personal writing converged. I ended up saying this: The role of the medium is to be an intermediary between the physical world and the spiritual world for fear that I’m going to fall of the map.
8. The faster I write the better my output. If I’m going slow I’m in trouble. It means I’m pushing the words instead of being pulled by them. ~ Raymond Chandler
9. My Zen sentence of the day: “A wood fire touches the stars.” Get your own Zen sentence (found at Pearl’s) HERE.
10 I realized while filming THIS video clip yesterday that the word tea is within the word steam.
11. If you’re awakened by gunshot at 6:00 a.m. in the city you might figure there’s been a robbery or murder. If you’re like me and live in country you can be pretty sure it means your neighbor is shooting squirrels.
12. According to Jibjab, “of all the years that have passed in time, there has never been one like ’09.” See their video review HERE.
13. My automated New Year Resolution 2010 is: I will stop kissing strangers right now. Get yours HERE.
More playing 13 Thursday are HERE.
January 7th, 2010 11:14 am
I vote for ‘twenty-ten’ … I heard this morning on the news that temperatures in TEXAS are colder than at the Arctic today … My zen sentence says “The psyche appears in writing between the lines.”
Hugs and blessings,
January 7th, 2010 11:24 am
words that sound the samwe onomatopeia — my resoliution sentence says I will use soap once a week. Explains a lot haha
January 7th, 2010 11:41 am
Since we ended up calling 2009 just ’09’ I think we’ll soon go to just ’10.’ That’s what I’m using on my checks. As for the wood for the woodstove…when we lived in northern Maine, we cut down trees, limbed them, dragged them out of the woods, split them and then stacked them outside, then stacked them INside so the wood could dry before we loaded it into the woodstove.
We handled that wood 7 times, so we were well aware of the effort needed to burn wood. (It also made our furniture fall apart from the extreme heat!).
January 7th, 2010 11:46 am
I never heard of wood heat making furniture fall apart! I wrote my first check the other day and didn’t know what to do, so I wrote out the whole 2010, but I’d rather just say ’10.
January 7th, 2010 12:27 pm
Here is what I resolve for the coming year!
I will start walking right now
And here I go!
January 7th, 2010 2:30 pm
I heard it’s warmer in Alaska than it is here!
http://iamharriet.blogspot.com/2010/01/why-i-love-atkinshow-are-your.html
January 7th, 2010 2:51 pm
We went from slush-warm to frozen-footprints in about five hours. I am so wishing I had gotten the shovel out while the big, fat flakes were still flying.
January 7th, 2010 3:12 pm
Of the two choices above, you should definitely say “twenty ten” because “two HUNDRED and ten” occurred eighteen hundred years ago. I think you meant to say “two THOUSAND and ten.”
My resolution “I will stop singing in public once a week.” It’s ambiguous. Do I stop my once-a-week singing? Or is my singing so constant that, once a week, I’ll stop? It’s a moot point either way, since I rarely sing in public.
January 7th, 2010 3:44 pm
OOPs. have to fix that. Thanks, Bonnie.
January 7th, 2010 7:50 pm
Loved that tea video. I’m bundled up with 3 shirts and we have electric heat and the house is 72.
January 7th, 2010 9:23 pm
Oh wow. I love the quote by Henry David Thoreau about writing when you’re hot if you will. Good stuff!
January 7th, 2010 9:47 pm
We are having cold weather (at least for us) and might have ice on the roads tomorrow! I know…it sounds silly when written, but when you live on the Gulf of Mexico usually there is only a few days of cold weather! Happy TT!
January 8th, 2010 12:24 am
This makes me want to ask all sorts of questions…..is the woodstove the only source of heat for your house? What room is is located in? Do you and Joe chop your own wood? Will you post a picture? (I am convinced that I was born in the wrong decade and the wrong climate…..I dream of living with a woodstove, even if I am not sure of all of the logistics involved. It just has the feeling of perfection to it.)
#7-I’m laughing at that one!
My Zen sentance– Total acceptance reduces to absurdity.
My Resolution– I will start drinking tequila once a week.
Great Thirteen!!
January 8th, 2010 1:13 am
No we shouldn’t say twenty ten, but twenty thousand ten, like ninetieen hundred ninety nine ! I never thought of it lol ! We too nurse our heating, geez it’s freezing cold for Belgium, we don’t have temperatures like – 10°C very often !
January 8th, 2010 7:33 am
I am just popping in to say hello and as usual you have a wonderful TT. xoxo
January 8th, 2010 11:07 am
The woodstove is our main source of heat. We do have one vent-less propane heater and one electric heater for back-up during frigid weather. Joe chops the wood and sometimes we buy a truckload (which can cost from about $100-250 depending on the the size of the truck bed). There is a knack to keeping it going overnight, by damping it down and it helps to have a knowledge of wood, such as locust is a hardwood that burns hot and long and pine burns up fast. We also have a primitive duct system and fan to blow the heat up from the cellar. The whole thing does put you in direct touch with your heat source and it does fit in with our interest in living more sustainable, because wood can always be gotten. We have to check our chimney yearly to make sure it is not clogged up. We have a beautiful soapstone chimney in our living room that heats up as the fire does and holds the heat. Many of us here in Floyd are intricately tuned into our woodstoves. They have to be tended to all day (and some will get up once a night to throw a log on).
I do love to see smoke come from the chimney from houses here in the mountains.
January 8th, 2010 11:09 am
My Zen phrase was “Hope whispers wordlessly”. Thanks for these cool links! Happy New Year!!
January 9th, 2010 2:29 pm
Thank you for answering all of my nosy woodstove questions!
January 9th, 2010 4:25 pm
Really enjoyed this! Nursing a wood stove definitely makes a person realize the true value of shelter from the elements our Earth can dish out.
I also really love your format for looking back at your blog year. I’d like to do the same at my blog this month.
January 10th, 2010 2:52 am
We’re having the big chills too and I love the stability of the weather lately. Since living in the coastal area, we rarely got snow on December, it usually starts around January or February. Our winter is plague by rains then after that a cold spell comes, freezes everything and making the roads slippery.
January 14th, 2010 10:15 am
I vote for twenty ten too. I live in Tampa and we’re experiencing unusually cold weather this past week and a half. I moved from NJ to here 5 years ago to get away from the cold. LOL Great TT list!
January 17th, 2010 9:12 am
The zentences. Wow. My zentence of the day: “A wood fire promotes a positive paradigm shift?” I love how both of ours involved wood fires!