| New Year's Day |
As I type this, it's after midnight and I'm still awake. I stayed up to make sure that 2015 left us.......and thank goodness it did!!!! And by the way, if you're interested, the EPACT for this year is "21". |
| January 2nd | Again on New Year's Eve Deb and I put together a 3-D Puzzle; this one was St. Peter's Basilica. To see pictures of the results from the last three years, click HERE. |
| January 3rd | Click HERE to see three Minnesota daughters who "appear" to have remained loyal to their father's football team (but only because someone gave them the t-shirts as a Christmas gift). Also, our family Christmas get-together was yesterday; click HERE to see the whole family (minus grandsons Josh and Jake, who had to work that day). |
| January 4th | Finally.......there are a couple of ice fishing houses on the lake. Normally that would have happened a month ago. |
| January 5th | Nada. |
| The Epiphany | Ah yes.......the last day of the Christmas Season. Tomorrow the Holidays are OVER! Now maybe we can settle down to a calm and quiet winter. |
| Distaff Day |
Oh my goodness! Would you believe that this will be opening up in Grand Rapids next week? Is this town becoming High Class or what? Click HERE. NOTE ADDED LATER: There have been a few e-mails from people wondering where the Fuji Restaurant is located. It's located near the center of town in the building that Rivers Wine Bar occupied during it's short duration back in 2006 and 2007. The red X marks the spot. Click HERE. |
| January 8th |
I love these gray, dreary winter days. Days like this let you savor a bad mood. -- Calvin, via Bill Watterson (circa 1990) Me too! |
| January 9th | North Carolina Laurie, who you've read about in these Chronicles on many occasions, saved a bunch of "Today's Pictures" (plus a few others) from 2015 and sent them to me a week or so ago. Over the last couple of days I put her series of pictures into a slide show. It's a tad difficult to use because the pictures are of different sizes, but if you want to take a look at it, click HERE. Thanks for the pictures Laurie!!!!! |
| January 10th |
23 below zero this morning. Beware the Pogonip! By the way, late yesterday afternoon with a temp of 5 below zero and with a fairly strong wind out of the Northwest, I took my first walk around the lake. I stayed on the outer edge; there were no human tracks out toward the center and even though I'm quite sure it's safe, I'm certainly not going to be the first one to go there. |
| Plow Monday | The Hawk is still out! |
| January 12th | I don't believe there's a single Muskrat lodge on the lake this year. Muskrats are here, there's no doubt about that, because I've seen them on the lake all summer, but I didn't see a single lodge (or den or push-up or whatever you want to call them) on my trek around the lake a few days ago. Some say that indicates a short and/or mild winter. |
| The Ides of
January |
Concerning yesterday's entry (above): In the Autumn of 2009 there were lots of Muskrat dens in the Mississippi River in Cohasset (click HERE to see a few of them). That winter turned out to be relatively mild and LBL was frozen for only 117 days. In the Autumn of 2013 the same place in the River had zero Muskrat dens (click HERE to see a picture), but the winter that year turned out to be one of the coldest we had in a long time and the lake was frozen for a record 163 days. Those two examples seem to dispute the relationship between Muskrat dens and winter weather as mentioned yesterday. Of course it's only two years worth of data and only at one particular place on one particular body of water.......but it's all I have. |
| January 14th | Does anyone have a suggestion for the next "word for the day"? I'm at a complete loss. Loneliness, Contentment, Laziness, Cruciverbalist, Simplicity, and Serenity have already been used, so come up with something different but along those lines please. Linda? Sean? |
| January 15th, 16th, 17th |
Up north with Deb doing some ice fishing and I left my laptop at home, hence, no Chronicles entries. |
| January 18th | 25 below zero this morning.......and I have to go outside and blow snow. Sigh....... |
| January 19th | The low temps for the last week or more have been in the teens and twenties below zero, but the weatherman is saying that those days are over now. Whew! |
| January 20th |
My son-in-law Jim arrived today (his buddies will arrive tomorrow) for their annual LBLR ice-fishing outing. Welcome back you guys!
PS: For many years they stayed in one of the cabins, but last year, since I didn't have a cabin available, I left town for the weekend and let them use my house. This year I have two available cabins but since they "experienced" the house last year, with its four beds, four recliners, two bathrooms, a dish washer, a fire place, etc, they don't want to go back to a cabin. So again this year I have to leave town and let them use my house. Oh well....... PPS: And they still call that "ice fishing". Sheesh! |
| January 21st | The word for the day is TRANQUILITY. TRAN-QUIL-I-TY! |
| January 22nd | The lake froze later than ever this year and the weather has been warm, but the ice thickness is about normal for this time of the year -- 17 inches. |
| January 23rd | So far Jim and the boys seem to be doing well, both here and on Bass Lake. The Crappies are biting!!!! |
| January 24th | As usual on this day, Happy Birthday to my Dear Little Sister Beth!!!! |
| January 25th | Look at this 3D Puzzle; it's from this weekend and it's not even New Year's Eve. Click HERE. |
| January 26th | With an average low temperature of 8 degrees below zero, today is statistically the coldest day of the year in this neck of the woods. But it was about 18 degrees above zero this morning. |
| January 27th | Click HERE.......or read this: In 1967 a patent application was submitted for a device called an "X-Y position indicator for a display system". Today we call that device a "mouse". |
| January 28th | We are now near the end of a January.......a January that was very warm and without much snow. This is the same January that was predicted by the Farmer's Almanac to be very cold and with tons and tons of snow. How typical!!! |
| January 29th |
The LBLR Chronicles Search Facility is now on a separate page and a link to it is toward the bottom of this page. This new search program (actually it's a specialized use of Google Search) should work better than the old one which had some limitations. Try it out and see what you think. PS: I'm wondering if I should add that link to all of the past Chronicles pages. Sigh....... There are 169 of them. |
| January 30th | In many years the ice fishing houses have already started to disappear from LBL by this time, but so far none of them have left. In fact, there were a couple portables out there today in addition to the three permanents. That may be because they lost about a month of ice fishing due to the late freeze. | January 31st | January is over; the winter is flying by!!!! |
