Good Morning!

Overcast, no wind, and temp is in the teens. No precipitation forecasted for today.

Well we made it through the inauguration and on our way to what I hope is a less controversial four year term. I know there are some of you that think Trump was the "best" president we have had and there are about an equal number of people that think he was the "worse" president we have ever had. Well, to each his own, and hopefully we can have less polarization than we have now. 

"Our" main issue should be working together to get thru this COVID-19 pandemic. Hopefully, we can all get vaccinated soon and life will get back to some sort of normalcy. OH, that brings up a favor I have for all of you. I have a very good friend that has COVID-19 right now. How about saying a get well prayer for "Jim's friend" right now.  Thanks.. 

Sherry and I have been doing the same as we have been doing for the last months-staying home. We have not started getting our shots, but tomorrow we will go on-line and see if we can get an appointment before the system crashes... I am VERY disappointed with the way the medical facilities/county health departments/state health departments have handled the communications for getting the vaccine. It's not like they didn't know that they were going to have to have a system in place. Sherry's mother who is in her 90's has not been informed when she can get the vaccine, however I also know of people a lot younger than her already vaccinated.  Something is wrong.. (I don't have any problem with essential workers of any age getting vaccinated first..) UPDATE: MN has now changed their weekly vaccine registration. Seniors can apply on-line for 24 hours and they will draw random names for the 8,000 available shots on Wednesday. There is also a phone number you can call.  Random picks will be notified. Maybe...

We had a nice surprise yesterday afternoon while watching the football playoffs. I seen movement in the backyard and when I looked out into the backyard there stood "small", "medium", and "large" bucks looking towards the house. So, all three of them made it through the hunting season. No, we did not have a camera ready to get a good shot. The background is all white, so it would have made for a nice shot to get all three of them with their heads up because the antlers would have been in contrast to the snow behind them.  Next time..

Sherry has kind of slowed down on quilting and has started digging into the closets. So she is working in this one closet and she comes over and says "this one is yours"! Well, it was a cardboard box that said "Hong Kong" on the side. We were in Hong Kong in the early nineties when I was sworn in as District Governor in Lions. It was fun going thru the "stuff" in the box, but all the "stuff" in the box went into the recycle bin.. For all of you that have not been to Hong Kong, Hong Kong has more skyscrapers than any other place in the world.. I can remember driving to the cities after we had been to Hong Kong and laughed when we looked at the Minneapolis skyline in comparison to Hong Kong. Quite a place, but I will never being going back, even if I had a free round trip ticket.. However I must say that it was very clean, considering the population.

I'm still working in the breezeway and slowly sorting/throwing things from the garage. I have a feeling I will be mowing lawn before I'm done. I'm going to take a little break and get all my woodcarving tools together and do some carving. I haven't done any carving since we were in Branson about a year ago. Golly, it really doesn't seem like it was that long ago-sometimes. I have a feeling I will have to do some sharpening before I get into the actual carving. Yesterday I watched a Wisconsin carver doing a demonstration on YouTube Carving. For anyone who has a little over an hour to spare, you can watch as a figure comes out of a piece of word.. 👨

As I have been sitting here writing this post, two of the fawns from last year are busy trimming down the black eyed susan's that we transplanted last fall. Oh well, if they don't come back, we got more to transplant. I think they will come back, because we usually trim them back in the fall anyway, probably not quite as close to the ground as the deer are doing tho. Now there are four out there eating now. Luckily the snow isn't very deep (maybe 4 inches) so the deer are not having any problem getting to the grass. I can remember last winter when the snow out there was well over three feet deep.. We can use the moisture, but I would rather see it come as rain next spring when the frost is out of the ground.  Now some of them are heading down to the creek, probably to get a drink of water.

Speaking of water, I had to put in a different heater in the pond for the fish. This one is a little higher wattage, so there is a little open water by the skimmer. There are all sorts of tracks going over to the open water. The water is nice and clear, so you can see the fish swimming below the open water and going out under the ice. I thought we might have lost them because the pond/skimmer was totally frozen over. There has to be open water someplace so the toxic gases in the water can escape or it will kill the fish.

Well, I guess it's time to go out and get to work in the breezeway. All the deer are now gone for a while, they will come back and go into the woods west of our place.

Have a good day and stay healthy..

Jim