When we stayed with my sister and brother-in-law over the Thanksgiving holiday, Cliff was impressed with the crispness, color, and clarity and great sound from their new 46" tv.  He had been talking about getting a new tv but i kept discouraging the idea because the one we had was perfectly good, very expensive when we bought it years ago, and what would we do with the old tv?  It was too big to replace the old one in the bedroom armoire. Trying to sell it on Craig's List or a local ad wouldn't work.  No one  buys old tvs.  So when we returned home and settled in to watch our old tv, I agreed we needed a better one with crispness, color, and clarity and great sound.  Some days after buying our new Vizio, the weather was cold enough to sit back with a good Netflix movie and a fire in the stove.  When the air is heavy, it's more difficult to pull a good draft when starting a fire.  The house filled with smoke making it impossible to see the crispness, color, and clarity and with all the smoke alarms bellowing, hard to hear the great sound.  I did advertise the old tv on Craig's List and on our local swap/trade site for FREE and within 24 hours, the tv was picked up and taken away.
     Rewind back to the long drive to Massachusetts before Thanksgiving................
To help the time pass on the the two-day drive, I borrowed some Robert B. Parker's Jesse Stone audios from our public library.  We got so hooked on them, that I bought the 8-DVD set, which came with a navy blue cap embroidered with PPD (Paradise Police Dept.) on the front, from Amazon a few weeks ago.  My PPD cap is worn when Tom Selleck appears on the screen.  The set arrived right before this flash-freeze frigid clipper arrived.  I don't watch much tv but now find movies and a few favorite programs more enjoyable.

Last night we dropped to 0 degrees.  Today's high was low 20's.  We thought we had made it through our coldest night without any problems until I ran a load of laundry.  There is a distinctly different sound between water filling the washing machine and water backed up splashing on the laundry floor.  A lot of water gushes onto the floor in the short time your brain realizes that sound is not what you want to hear until you rush to reach the shut off knob.  In the clean up we found the missing socks, some tie wraps, and the outdated roach motels.  The floor under the washer and drier is nice and clean and unless we leak again sometime in the future, it most likely won't be washed again.  Cliff poured hot water into the drain where the machine empties and melted the ice-jam.  Tonight will be warmer................about 12 degrees.