After a wonderful Thanksgiving in Somerville, MA visiting family, I contemplated the state of the infrastructure and road signage that we encountered during our drive both ways. Somerville has a lot of construction going on around I93 and a dearth of road signage. Trying to find out way from the family's apartment in western Somerville to our hotel in south-eastern Somerville was a challange which took in one case 90 minutes to go seven miles. Somerville uses blue background and white letters on street signs in some cases and a green background in others. None of the signs are reflective so after dark the signs seemingly disappear or cannot be read by us elderly folks. One sign in particular was the sign from the hotel to I93 south. The arrow pointed right and there were two choices separated by an inpentrable barrier. Which one to take? I took the widest one, which of course was the wrong one, and ther was no way to turn around and go back so I worked my way in a big circle back to the starting point and started off again, this time taking the narrow street. After about a mile, there it was, a tiny one square foot sign with an arrow pointing to the right for I93 south.. All told, the trip home was 28 miles longer that the trip there. The good news was that gasoline was only $1.87 per gallon in Somerville when compared the the $2.29 per gallon when I filled up before the trip.

Meanwhile, Thanksgiving dinner with our Scots cousin (a beautiful lass who is always a delight to be around) was wonderful and a great time was had by all. We caught up on the doings of our Scots relations and enjoyed great food and good wine.

Winter

Winter has arrived with a vengeance. Snow showers yesterday and temperature in the 30s today after a low last night of 25F. I awoke this am to the sound of burning money as the furnace was running. Why doesn't Mother Nature follow the calendar, winter doesn't start until December 21st.

It has been cold and raining off and on for the past week. All my leaves have not fallen from their trees in my yard yet so I have not bothered to begin raking. In some places they are at least shin deep and all the rain has matted them down. It should be fun trying to rake them and get them in the little paper bags that this state requires us to use. Leaves and yard debris must go to a recycling place rather than into the garbage so they can be turned into mulch. At $2.50 PER BAG and I will need about 150 bags it gets pretty expensive to cart off leaves. Then, I live on a private road, so to get the town to pick up the leaves I must haul them to the nearest public street and carefully place them so they will not be able to be hit by passing cars or fall over into the road or spill their contents. I can get about six bags in my car at a time and drive about 1/4 mile to the nearest public street, which counting the number of trips will use about five gallons of gas. All this to protect the environment.

Election Day

Election day for presidential elections is a BIG Deal in our town. We usually have a very high voter turnout and average 85%+ turnout. This year is no exception, local reports say the 51% of eligible voters had voted by 11:00 a.m. I voted at 7:00 a.m. and there were no lines so I was out of there by 7:10 a.m. and on my way to get a flu shot.

Again a very short line and was done by 7:45 a.m. I went past the flu clinic site later in the morning and there was a line out the door and down the hall. There were so many people waiting at 10:30 a.m. when they were supposed to close that they stopped allowing people in so they could just finish the line, which took until almost noon. The clinic was to reopen at 5:00 p.m. and at 4:30 p.m. there was already a line of about ten people waiting.

Today is the third day of freezing or below freezing night time temperatures. I have bitten the bullet and turned the heating system on. Since I generate steam with heating oil the cost can get quite high. When I woke up this morning I could hear the the boiler generating the sound of burning money. I guess I should be thankful that the price of heating oil is down from the high earlier when the oil supplier wanted me to sign up for a contract for the season at $4.199 per gallon. I chose not to do so in hopes that the price would come down.