Cold week

It has been very cold this week. Two days I wore long johns to stay warm while walking to/from the bus. Since the start of the term, only two days have had slippery roads. This week had all dry roads, so walking wasn't a problem.

We've had some nice ice formations on the edges of our pond this week. The pond doesn't get any sun, and it hasn't been warm enough to thaw in the shade, so the splashed water from the fountain just keeps building up on the ice and freezing. I'll post some pictures soon.

We almost had frozen pipes the first morning it was below freezing. I turned on the faucet in the bathroom, and it stopped running after a few seconds. I thought, uh-oh. John woke up right away and came to see what was going on. (That's the best way to get up him up in the morning - some kind of crisis. Works great.) He decided to just keep the water running. There was enough running water to break up the ice in the pipes, and we didn't have a problem. Since then, we've kept the faucets dripping at night. The reason we have such a problem in our bathroom is that while adding the addition and the master bathroom, the previous owners put the pipes in the attic and ran them right along the roof. The pipes are very sensitive to changes in temperature. We should add some insulation or find out something else we can do for them to lessen the effect of the weather.

The first day we moved into the house, the pipes tried to trick me. It was a hot summer day. I thought I was running cold water, but the water was hot, and it kept getting hotter. So I moved the handle over to the left. It stayed hot. I moved it back to the right, and it finally got cooler. Now, if I know it's hot outside and want cold water, I have to wait longer. The insulation or whatever fix we figure out to do, would help with that too.