Fighting cabin fever

It's cold. For an explanation of this winter that even grandkids can understand, check out this two-minute video clip from the Weather Channel. Click here.

Sensible people tend to stay inside when the Polar Express comes roaring through, and I like to think of myself as a sensible person. But after a while, face to face contact with other humans becomes preferable to the internet, movies, books, and mah jong. So, time to layer up and go slogging through the snow. Anywhere.

Yesterday we went out for lunch and found ourselves at the Hometown Wings Sports Grill.  It's a pretty typical sports bar, but it's just down the street, and they boast that their burgers are made from fresh meat, never frozen. (If you know anything about where typical processed fast food burgers come from, this means something.) We sat in a booth by the front window, basking in the warmth of the sunshine, which made it look like a nicer day than it actually was. (At this time of year, a day without cloud cover tends to be really, really cold.)  The portions at Hometown Wings are on the hefty side, something to keep in mind if you're counting calories, but overall, it was a pleasant enough experience.

Then, we went to a couple of open houses. We keep a pretty close eye on the local real estate market, and "what else is out there", in case we ultimately decide that this little house just isn't going to work for us, even with an addition.  I like to get ideas from how other people in small houses (but bigger than our 600 sq. ft.) configure their space. Jamestown has an abundance of really cute houses, too!  The downside of looking at homes when you already have two (the Cleveland one hasn't sold yet) and are not in a position to buy a third  is that you might stumble upon a house that you absolutely fall in love with.  That happened yesterday, and I'm seriously trying not to cry. Let me just say that we could make this place pretty fantastic, too, if we had a BIG budget for improvements and didn't care whether we over-invested or not. But, that kind of defeats the purpose of simplifying. Not that I'm sure we've actually simplified our lives at this point. Oh well. We keep working at it!

We stopped at Home Depot on the way home for another shelf, this time for the bathroom. I'm going to lick my storage issues one idea at a time. Who knew that walls could be so useful? 

Today, it's sunny again, at the moment, but the temp will actually be dropping throughout the day and we may be headed into sub-zero territory. The wind chill is already there. Once again, we forced ourselves out the door this morning, this time to go to church, because we needed the brain stimulation (use it or lose it!) and we really enjoy the people there.

Social needs satisfied for the moment, I can now hunker down and make the chili to get us through the football games later today.