The Winter Game

Frozen trees

The temperatures continue to plummet by the week.  It is hard to believe that this is just the start of seven months of winter.  This morning, my first chore was to scrape ice off the INSIDE of our cabin windows that built up over the night.  And I don’t just mean a little bit of ice.  I had to go outside and grab the ice scraper from the car to make any headway against the frozen crystal sheet that had invaded the lower quarter of the window.  I scraped away to the rhythm of “seven more months, seven more months…..” 

I think this means it's COLD now

After my ice scraping escapade was over, I noted the sun beginning its rise above the horizon.  It was 9:15.  We still have 2 months of losing daylight (as well as heat!).  To further the anxious feeling welling up inside me, my eyes caught the thermometer outside that registered at exactly 0 degrees.  

 Last week welcomed the first negative temperatures in Delta. It now seems common for the evening and morning temperature to be somewhere below zero.  Thankfully, during the day, we get blasted with that hot sun, causing our temperatures to rise somewhere around 15 degrees.   Heat wave! 

We have learned that when you arrive at work, the game is to compare the morning temperatures recorded at your various houses.  Because everyone lives so spread out, there can often be quite a difference in temperature.  And of course, whoever has the lowest temperature starts the day a little more proudly.  

Ben and I felt that we really needed to become competitive in this daily game, so while we were in Fairbanks this weekend, we bought a digital weather station that should prove more reliable than the old clock-style thermometer currently in use.  After coming home and putting our new recording device outside, we ran back inside and excitedly watched the main unit’s screen that details the outside temperature.  We were fixated on the screen, as if watching a favorite TV show, observing the temperature plummet from 56 to 45 to 35, to 32 in a matter of minutes…..and then altogether stop recording.  We were perplexed.  We purposely bought this more expensive unit because it, unlike the other options, records temperatures below -40, which we figured we would need if we were going to be competitive in the game.    After perusing the directions again, we realized that in the past we had never had the need to invest in anything other than the standard alkaline batteries that apparently freeze (like everything else) below 32 degrees and stop working.   But, fear not, we’ve added lithium batteries to our grocery store list, so soon we should be able to brag about our victories in the “how unbearably frozen was your house this morning?” game.    Just another one of the joys of interior living.