Dear Friends,

It is snowing out and the temperatures have warmed up from well below zero for a couple days. We have a Siberian air mass headed our way with the severe cold coming back this weekend. Things just seem to break when it gets this cold for an extended period of time.

On Monday when it was -25 here at the office, we had a series of weather-related failures. The hot water stopped working until I found a portable heater to put in the closet where the instantaneous hot water heater was located to thaw out the pipes. Grace’s car just stopped working and was left stranded in a cell-phone dead zone. Worst of all, the furnace failed in the warehouse and the crew down there tried to put up a brave face and continue working as the temperatures dipped but ultimately we had to give up our conference room for Mac repairs.

The cold weather does make for interesting noises from the crunch of the cold snow beneath your feet to the creaking of the house as it contracts and expands from the cold outside and the heat inside. The roads tend to be more slippery during very cold weather because road salt doesn’t work at those temps. Fan Tail likes the cold and snow and she will just roll around in it and run on the trails from our snowshoes. On the other hand, Hammerhead needs to be coaxed to even step one paw out the door.

It has been a historic week. We had the inauguration playing on many of the Macs in our offices and stores, and pretty much everything stopped as we watched the 44th President of the USA inaugurated in front of a couple million friends. It is simply amazing and encouraging to realize that just 40 years ago we were working for basic civil rights in voting, housing and schools, and that less than 150 years ago, slavery was still common. In 1977, when Vermont was still a sovereign country, our state constitution outlawed slavery, becoming the first country to do so and later, the first state to outlaw it altogether. We now we have an African-American President of the USA. I was so proud to be an American, so proud of my country, and so proud of my President.