Hello! Happy Sunday. One week until we leave. We've had an interesting couple of days since I wrote last, particularly because the power went out on Friday afternoon. I was on skype at the time with my boss. Oops. We had discussed all of the important things by then though, and were on to just chatting. Since the power went out in the afternoon, our apartment stayed warm for the rest of the day, which was nice. We have electric heat, as opposed to most places here that are heated by woodstove. Friday's storm was pretty nasty here, because of the rain and wind. Max and I went out for a walk in the morning and there was some snow in the raindrops. But apparently there was lots of snow in the mountains that our power lines have to cross, so out it went. And of course, it always goes out right at the end of the storm. Pretty much at the moment it went out, the wind and rain here stopped. Max and I had a big walk outside since it was dark in our house and the weather had improved. We walked all over town and talked to people, then we played ball in the yard. That evening we had dinner with friends at their house, which was wonderful. The power outage did not inhibit their ability to make a kickass thai dinner, and their house was warm and cozy from their woodstove.

Spencer worked at the station yesterday (the station is generator-powered during outages), and I stayed home with Max. After hanging out here until the late morning, getting cold, and finishing my book, we went and sat around upstairs (where we used to live when I first moved here) by the fire with Kylee and Mike. We did more walking in the afternoon, and at 2:00 the power came back on! We were all happy about that for obvious reasons, but also because the station Christmas party was in just a couple of hours, and we all needed to shower and bake! I warmed up our apartment downstairs and made a cake. Spencer came home, and we undertook an activity that happens only very occasionally-- cutting his hair! It took about an hour, and now it's all gone! Well, not all of it, but it's short now. His hair was 8 inches long, which is long enough to donate to an organization that makes wigs for cancer patients. He also trimmed his beard, and he looks great. He surprised lots of people at the Christmas party, particularly because he'd seen many of those people just a day before...

The party was very very fun and I had a great time. I didn't have high hopes for it, but I enjoyed myself. Today we are back to a more normal routine that involves home computer use. I hope the power doesn't go out any more, because it would be nice to be able to have the heaters on this week during the cold temperatures.

The high tides the last couple of days have been some of the highest this year, and they were in the middle of the day, so I took some photos while I was out. I posted them just a little while ago, if you're interested in checking them out.

Also, we have still had a few flies, but our counting and control system were hampered on Friday by not having any power, so Spencer thinks that that day's count is an underestimate. It still appears we're on the downside of the plague, which is good.

That's all I know. I hope you all had a nice weekend! Talk to you again before we go.