I've been a slothful journal keeper for the last few days, so I have some catching up to do.

First, we had a wonderful snowfall on Saturday, a windy but soft and scenic storm that blew in early in the morning and swept around our neighborhood most of the day. We basically stayed inside and saw the storm from the coziness of our home. As the day progressed, we received messages from the police department that we should stay off the roads, which was fine with us, since we had ample food and supplies (and love and soft-heartedness) to survive the worst of storms. We read and chatted and watched the snow descend in swirls, and then around 2:00, Delycia set a fire going in the hearth, and we settled in for serious coziness for the next few hours. Around 6:00, I saw our snowplow guy with his grand-looking truck with flashing lights bulldozing the snow in our driveway, and it settled me into even more coziness. (At 1:30 a.m., I was awakened by his flashing lights again, as he went over our driveway a second time, just to clean up the last remnants.) 

On Sunday, we rolled down our shoveled driveway at 10:00 am for the trip to the Quaker Meeting, which was a good one for me. I found the hour of silence to be enriching in many ways, and I look forward to next Sunday already. After the service, we attended a discussion of a reading about the history of Quakerism, and I found it enlightening. I know almost nothing about the Quaker faith, so this was a very educational hour for me.  

On Monday, Cia walked around the neighborhood for nearly two hours, handing out notices about the meeting at our house coming up on Wednesday (concerning a new neighbor's proposal to build a dock on the river). I was going to accompany her, but I'm glad I didn't. Typical of my friendly, generous wife, she spent much time chatting with people as she went house to house, something I would have surely hated. But she did a wonderful job, I'm sure, of getting to know our neighbors better and of encouraging them to come to the meeting. Surely she is becoming known as one of the friendliest people in the entire neighborhood!

The last two days, we have taken fine walks outside -- yesterday along the beach at Napatree Point, and today along the Mystic River on River Road. It was so good to feel the winter wind and sunshine in those beautiful locations.

Here are our magnetic fridge poems for the last few days . . .