• Location: Providence, RI
• Mood: hopeful (a little)
• Music: REM, "Kohoutek"

"The walls are built up stone by stone. The fields divided one by one."

Cold this morning. I got up at 9:30 a.m., and the temperature was 22˚F, with the windchill at 6˚F. An hour and a half later, it's the same. And we have a wind advisory – a northwest wind 15 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 43 mph. Today's high is forecast at only 28˚F. I will not be leaving the House. We had rain yesterday, and it melted most of the snow.

I wasn't even aware how stressed out I was over the Alabama Senate race until Doug Jones won last night. On Facebook I wrote, "I had not even dared to hope. Maybe it's time to start hoping again." And I'd like that to be true. I felt last night's victory was the first cause I'd had to hope since November 8th, 2016. I'm clinging to it. If Alabama can be won, an awful lot of other states can be flipped to blue.

We found our Christmas tree yesterday, in the garden department at a Lowes in Cranston. I'm glad we didn't give up. It's another symbol of hope and normalcy that I need right now.

I'm almost finished Cormac MCCarthy's The Orchard Keeper, and yesterday I read "Burrowing in Lystrosaurus: preadaptation to a postextinction environment?" Winter's Day began in GW2, so there was gaming, as well.

TTFN,
Aunt Beast




2:20 a.m. (this morning)