Cold!!! in A small but passable life.

Friday Feb. 27, 2015-

It’s cold!

The flight home was nice. An hour late taking off, but nice. Mom had the alarm set for 4:30am but woke me up at 3:45am. We were at the Mesa airport at 5:30am.The line waiting to go through security was ridiculous. Such a farce. Totally.

I had a window seat this time and actually was able to see the ground through intermittent cloud cover most of the way.

Once on the ground I went outside to check on my ride. Did I mention that it is cold? My ride wasn’t there. I went back inside to wait. About fifteen minutes later Clayton showed up.

We went over to the college where Jassy was hanging out between classes so I could surprise her. She was surprised. Good times. Good hugs. She wasn’t expecting to see me until she got home after her last class about 7pm.

Clayton and I went to the apartment. I dug my Winter clothes out of my big black duffel. After changing into three layers plus my boots and Walking Coat and tuque I took off for a walk.

Did I mention that it is cold?

After a good two walk on old familiar sidewalks and stopping by the student union to pick up a New York Times and a copy of the local paper I returned to the apartment to let Liam dog out of his crate and take him out for short walk.

I put on a pot of coffee and started reading the paper.

At six I started cooking dinner. A crap load of taters for mashed taters, four nice pork chops Jassy had set out to thaw that I fried after egging and flouring, and green beans.

Everything was about ready when they returned home from class about 7pm. All Jassy had to do was make the gravy. Good food. Good times.

Since it was going to dip down into the single digits and I hadn’t set the van up for sleeping yet; making my bed, hanging towels over the windows, and finding a pee bottle, I just rolled out my sleeping pad on the floor in the extra bedroom. My freshly laundered blankie and pillowcase smelled so good.

Since I’d been up for about twenty hours I slept pretty good.

This morning Jassy had coffee made when I got up a little after 8am. It was so nice to sit and have morning coffee with her again. Good times.

I’ve already started getting the backpacking gear out and sorted. Jassy has already filled an old milk crate to overflowing with provisions. I have no idea how I’m going to get it all in the backpack. It may not be possible to carry a full month’s supply. I’ll just have to trial load the pack to find out. The worse case scenario would be carrying a grocery tote bag or two to the campsite. That would be a pain in the ass and kind of a rookie move, but it would work.

So yeah, Jassy’s Spring Break starts after her last class on the 6th of March. How soon after that we head out to the woods mainly depends on the weather. She still hasn’t decided how many days she’ll be staying. I still plan on at least a month.

The wifi here at the apartment isn’t connecting today. I’ll have to take this over to the student union to post it.

Oh yeah, did I mention that Hardee’s is gone? Totally gone. Blank lot. Bulldozed, loaded into a dumpster and hauled off gone. A sign says that a CVS Pharmacy is being built there. Crazy. There’s a Walgreens two blocks away.

I wonder how many hundreds of evenings I’ve spent at Hardee’s over the last four years. It’s sad. They had a really nice restroom there. So sad.

Anyway, time to try to do something constructive.

Inside, not outside. Did I mention that it is cold?

Saturday Feb. 28, 2015-

Yesterday was a fine day. I didn’t change out of my sweatpants or go outside. Did I mention that it is cold outside?

I spent the day going through my pile of crap piled in Jassy’s spare bedroom. I’ve got the pile of backpacking gear I’m getting ready laid out in the living room. I’ve started re-packaging the food into serving sizes and then into Ziploc bags. And then the smaller bags consolidated into gallon-sized bags. One pound per person per day is what I’m aiming for. So far I’ve got nearly fifteen pounds of food.

Jassy cooked a fine dinner of blueberry pancakes, oven cooked bacon, and hash browns. So good. After Clayton left for work at 9pm I started washing the dishes. With Jassy drying and putting the dishes away we had a clean kitchen in twenty minutes. Easy, peasy.

This morning when we woke up it was snowing. It’s now 2pm. It has snowed all day so far. Maybe three inches or more by now.

Did I mention that it is cold?

The wifi isn’t too good right now at the apartment so I’ll have to wait to post this when we go over to the student union. Jassy wants to go this evening. Whether I go with them to trudge through the snow remains to be seen.

I have I mentioned that it is cold outside?