The little routines of winter are now well established. We back the cars into the driveway so that, if the car won't start, it's easier to connect the jumper cables. We keep a mixture of sand and salt by the door. In this very cold weather, salt doesn't work, but sand helps to keep walkway safe. The forecast is calling for a substantial snow storm, with high winds, starting tomorrow afternoon. It'll warm a bit when the snow comes, so the snow blower will be easier to start.

In this morning's spam: "cough syrup particle accelerator". I'm pretty sure that I don't want to know any more. (Spammers believe that if they include random words in their message, spam filters won't be able to catch the message. Good spam filters aren't fooled and can adapt quickly.)

We'll visit Adam, Jennie, and Lily tomorrow morning. We haven't seen them since Christmas and haven't been to their house since Thanksgiving.

In the "Ready when you are, C.B." dept., we have this news story. A scientist works on a project for 18 years, puts the instrument on the Saturn space mission, and then learns that someone forgot to turn the thing on. (The "Ready when you are, C.B." references goes back to an apocryphal story about Cecil B. DeMille. One rendition of the story is here.)

[Recently I've noticed that there's been a delay in the delivery of some journal entries. The message on Martin Luther King Day, for example, didn't show up until Wednesday. It appears that the problem originates at the web site that creates this web log. This is the second time that this has happened. I like the current web log hosting site, but if the problem becomes chronic, I may need to investigate alternatives.]