My favorite winter activity is going back inside.

That line up there at the top doesn't fit us. We hit 73 today and by Thursday we'll be up to 80, about 12 degrees above our normal for late January.
I track the news and weather back in Grand Rapids and the word brutal fits. Today: more cold, more wind, more snow. Tomorrow: repeat. Well, not exactly. Today they hit a high of 23, and tomorrow it will be 8.
People should not live anywhere the temperature can be said with one syllable.

One of the things on my to-do list for this week is to put together the CV the college has asked for. I can't remember what year I got my Masters so I went digging through a couple of boxes out in the garage where I thought I'd find my diploma.

I didn't find the diploma and don't know where else to look. But I did come across about five photo albums I didn't know we had. Pam and I spent some time going through them this afternoon and smiled a lot. I didn't think we had that many pics of the boys when they were very young. By the time they were in middle elementary we'd apparently grown bored with them and didn't take any pics, but we got a surprising number from before that.

Looking at those photos of the two boys < 7 or 8 and knowing who they turned out to be made me think about the importance of the effort we call parenting. God blessed us with two bright, easy boys who really gave us no trouble. On one of the second grade teacher's reports she wrote, "He has a great sense of humor that he needs to learn to use at appropriate times." That's about as bad as it ever got. (And it still fits.)

I was also reminded how much I enjoyed being a dad. Pam took pictures of me with one or both of them, usually down on the floor together. Good stuff.

I also found an entire album documenting our rehab of the house on Porter Street, in Michigan, our first 100-year old house. I'd forgotten how much work I did inside and out, how extensive the renovation was. And how cool that house was.

We could tell two minutes in that we didn't want to watch the Grammy's.
Good grief.
So I went to the DirectTV online program listing and saw a show titled, "Don't let your neck tell your age." I thought, "Honey, my neck is the least of my problems."
We ended up watching an episode of "The Amazing Dr. Pol" that we'd recorded and not watched. It's on NatGeoWild. Interesting show.

It's Sunday night. I won't be here much longer.