Minnesota nice, smoke in the snow and other updates

There are a few things that I never anticipated having to do in my life, one of which was shoveling snow. Last week we got about 3" during the day and we were forced to break in the new shovel that Grandpa Joe gave us. We have a fairly long driveway and snow shoveling is back-breaking. Fortunately our neighbor from across the street brought his snow blower over and cleared off the end of the driveway where the snow was deepest. I was very grateful.

As this winter has had an exceptional amount of snow, our yard is buried under about 4' of snow Saturday was a balmy 32° so we decided to sit outside and enjoy a cigar. I had to dig out an area to sit. This weekend is supposed to be the beginning of a warming trend to take us into Spring. Before that, however, there will be temps in the single digits and lows with wind chill in the range of -20°. That's pretty cold.