It’s been really cold.  Really, really cold.  Highs below zero for several days with nighttime lows in the 30s and 40s below.   The all-time unofficial low temperature in Embarrass was reached on February 2, 1996 at -64°F. More recently, Embarrass reached -54°F on January 17, 2005.

A few mornings ago I walked out and noticed our big window looked weird.  It looked like a kid had drawn on it with a white crayon at first, but I took a closer look and realized it’s a crack.  It’s really weird, it goes from the edge to the middle of the glass and stops without hitting another edge.  It’s the inner pane of the thermal pane.  Apparently the cold was too much for it.  Insurance doesn’t cover it.

I was on the phone today with State Farm getting this information, when Ryan called.  He was on his way to Ely to thaw pipes at our apartment building and he had gone off the road into the ditch!  Luckily, he and the car are both fine, and he was really close to a tow truck so he didn’t wait long to get pulled out.  When it’s this cold, car exhaust freezes and makes the roads slick.

The frozen pipes at the building were a relatively easy fix too, although Ryan did lose several hours to that chore.  If that hadn’t happened, he wouldn’t have gone to the garage and realized it was below freezing in there and that we were completely out of propane!  We were able to call and get our tank filled within a few hours for a pretty reasonable extra charge — I had called yesterday for a normal “come give us some propane when you’re in the area” kind of thing, but we didn’t know we were SO low.  The house didn’t cool down at all though, and it was a weekday early afternoon.  It could have been Friday evening…

So, we’re surviving.  We’re playing lots of video games and we have a slide in the living room for some physical activity.  The kids chase each other around and jump and wrestle on the beds.  Delia, Henry and I are getting some exercise with some cleaning projects too.  We got a new Swiffer, and they fight over it.  Might have to get another one so both kids can do it at the same time!  Or look even harder for the missing piece to our old one…

One day soon hopefully we’ll get pictures up of our travels to Illinois and Florida for the holidays.  We had a wonderful time!