One of the many perks of buying a new Subaru is the optional free session with a rep to provide a guided tour of your car’s systems and operation (lots of fun new tech features), and to answer all your questions.  This was performed thoroughly and commendably at our local dealership today, well worth the venture into the frigid freezer.  We were  able to pick up an ordered accessory at the same time, and the parts dept. even followed up promptly and personally to make sure E was satisfied with it.

Not to sound like a Subaru commercial, but love!!  The difference between a typical Subaru dealership and the TN one is like night and day.  It’s part of the reason E, a retired, loyal GM employee, ended up choosing Subaru, because of the superior dealership customer service, going above and beyond.  And that’s during a pandemic.

Naturally we had to adjourn to Yellow Springs, to do a little “necessary” shopping and lunch at HQ.  YS, though not perfect, is still safer and less risky to visit than most places during COVID, with its village-wide precautions.  We dropped by Dark Star Books, where I stocked up on used books and visited with Spooky the bookstore cat, seen here lounging atop the comics.  Here is the “now-famous” view from the Tavern’s back room, with lingering snow, and a brown beer.

My brain (and the rest of me) is too frozen to think of a caption for this bleak, snowy deep freeze.  The only consolation is knowing the deep south and other normally warmer places are feeling it, too!  Not that reassuring, knowing climate change is no respecter of location or denial.  It’s a bipartisan, equal opportunity destroyer.

Wednesday was a rare break between arctic blasts, so after my first cardiologist visit in years (I still appear to have a heart), we took a walk in Koogler Wetland Prairie Reserve.  All was melting snow and mud, but we were happy to see all the new boardwalks and improvements by volunteer groups.  There were some definite signs of recent beaver action, also helpful in preserving and creating natural wildlife habitats.  Here are a few scenes.

Now it’s back to the teens and single digits, i.e. hibernation…until the next new doctor in a long string of specialists that I’ve put off for too long.  Aagghh I’m turning into my parents!  So many ways to die, but maybe I can delay the inevitable.

Yes, it’s been a while, in case you’ve noticed.  Nothing much to say in cold storage, a.k.a. hibernation.  I just curl up in a ball and wait for spring–if there is a spring.  No telling these days.

I find it hilarious, albeit strange, that this latest wintry storm bypassed us for the most part and slammed the deep south, including TN, on its way up the coast.  I can imagine the shock and panic!  No, climate change isn’t a thing!  Meanwhile, everyone’s spreading and dying of COVID, also not real.  Just stay home, dummies, or at least use protection.  It’s not that complicated.

Here’s what passes for snow in SW Ohio!  Even Misu is amused.  My mini-“salad bar” is not, though. It’s been in the teens and even single digits outside for days, weeks, I’ve lost track.  How do people live like this?!  Well, back under I go.

I suppose I should get around to the new year of 2022.  Our eve was quiet and non-eventful, the way we prefer it.

Outside, the world continues to hustle and hurtle around in a materialistic panic, carelessly infecting each other with the latest variant, getting stranded for days in chilling traffic pile-ups on highways and at airports, while the climate itself goes crazy.  One day it’s freakishly warm, the next it’s colder than frozen hell, while the actual poles are alarmingly melting.  It’s like humanity wants to kill itself off, and doing a pretty good job of it.

The last two years seem like one big blur of extreme changes yet sameness.  A lot has happened to turn our worlds upside down, while we seem to be frozen in stasis or even reversing direction away from progress.  Sometimes I’m not sure which century we’re still in.  But that’s just me.  Maybe it’s mind-freeze.  It’s hard to think or be optimistic in this cold.

Here is Misu the Gargoyle on the highest shelf in my office, trying to stay warm.  Cats are one of the most sentient species I know.  They know how to live.