Happy New Year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!  May the Goddess bless all of your endeavors and you and your families this new year.

The word for today is - WINDY!  Like triple windy!  Early this morning a front came through and with it strong winds and some mixed rain/snow.  The snow will not amount to anything, barely a measureable trace.  However, the winds have only gotten stronger as the day has gone on and tomorrow and Tuesday the temperatures will drop to accompany strong winds.  Brrrrr.  Wind chills will be in the single digits.  Yesterday Mr. Don and I were enjoying temperatures in the high 30's/low 40's F.  Today we're staying in (the Packers game with Detroit is on at noon), but we may have to venture out tomorrow because I'm out of eggs and we're going to need some more groceries -- I don't know how but I did manage to forget how much food Mr. D can tuck away in those hollow legs of his!  That means braving truly COLD weather for me for the first time this winter season.  Not looking forward to that.  And, get this, by the end of the week the temperatures are forecast to climb  back into the low 40's during the day AND no snow for at least the next 10 to 14 days.  In fact, we will have mild temperatures, so the weatherman said this morning, for the remainder of January.

This is just straight out strange weather for southeastern Wisconsin, people!  But I like it, I like it!

I got up early yesterday morning (before 5:30 a.m.) -- judt didn't sleep well.  I spent the quiet dark hours before sunrise cooking and reading.  I had three sirloin strip steaks that needed to be used but I felt they were too thin to try to grill or attempt to pan fry and oven-finish, so I cut them into beef tips and tossed them into the crockpot with some special secret ingredients, since Mr. D and I were going to the museum to see the Search for Cleopatra exhibit.  We were gone much longer than I thought we might be (we didn't get home until 6:30 p.m. after leaving the house shortly after 9 a.m.) so I patted myself on the back for turning the crockpot down to "warm" rather than keeping it on the "low" setting before we left the house yesterday morning. 

When we arrived back home I turned the crockpot back to "low" first thing when I got in the house.  The beef tips were soon ready but it was close to 9:30 p.m. when we finally sat down to east (Mr. Don was HUNGRY) to melt-in-the-mouth tender beef tips and a nice gravy with sour cream mixed in spoonful at a time in our own dishes as we spooned everything over noodles. I cooked up some frozen peas and we were good to go!  The secret to good cooking is making sure you're really hungry when you finally do eat.

While supper was coming together we downloaded our photographs and Mr. Don's videos from the museum to my laptops (for various reasons).  Later we drank home-made wine coolers and we actually stayed up talking, laughing, making vicious fun at Carson Daly and his guests in Times Square that we had on the t.v. (although Blake Shelton's performance beamed in from LA was good), and after celebrating midnight the tv went off and smooth jazz went on!

I'm sure Mr. Don spoke at least 10 million words yesterday... I expect by the time we get back from Spain my ears will have fallen off from over-use.