One more time...

... for yet another frigid cold snap. We had a beautiful day today... sunny and warm and Spring-like..... so nice outside that I let Mickey Kitty and Sweet Pea outside. Mickey wasn't out there for three seconds before he started to chase the chickens, but as soon as they squawked at him, he backed off.

And what happens in the Spring? The neighbor's goats manage to get out of their field and come marching down their road and up our hill. I was in the TV room watching Oprah's trip to Australia when I heard the cries of the baby goats. I thought they sounded too close... when I looked out of the window, there was a goat parade in our driveway-- about eight of them. I'm long since over calling my husband for goat-chasing. I went out there to tell the goats I was missing Oprah and would they please go back to their own property?! They ran out of the driveway but didn't go much further. Back into the house I went, got my husband's car keys and I drove that car behind the goats all the way down our hill and then up the hill to the neighbor's house. The goats ran right back behind the gate to their field and I was sitting in the neighbor's driveway honking the horn of the car. No one came out so I just backed up and drove back home.

My husband showed me how to shut off the main water valve to the house today.... just in case we have a "frigid spell" (as the TV weather wizard calls it) when he's not home. During the last cold snap, I was upset because we even have to shut the water off if the temperature goes below 32 degrees. I never remember having to do that when I lived up in NY. So why here?! Then I was talking to my cousin T out in Arizona... when we were having the cold snap last week, so were they..... and T had to shut off the water to his house also. Why on earth?! And he used to live in NY also... never had to do that up north either, but now he's in AZ and shutting off the water to his house during below-freezing nights. Seems that they just don't build the systems to withstand the infrequent and unusual below-zero temperatures once you get south of the Mason-Dixon line, I guess.

Speaking of NY, by the way..... when we were up in College Station the other day, we tried a new Chinese restaurant that my husband found on-line. Since we've been in this state, we have just about given up trying to find a Chinese restaurant whose food can compare to the Chinese restaurants in NY. There was one in Clear Lake that came sort of close, but not quite there. We have one Chinese restaurant here in town but everyone tells us not to even bother trying it, being that we've had "real Chinese food" elsewhere (as in up north). There is an Oriental buffet-style restaurant in College Station that we tried a few months back, but it wasn't good enough to make us want to go back there. However, on Monday after the movie, we searched out the little restaurant which is in a corner of one of the shopping centers in College Station. (That big town is like Clear Lake-- shopping centers wherever you look.)

That tiny little restaurant had the most delicious food.... freshly made, beautifully fresh seafood and vegetables, and the best service we've had in a restaurant in a good long while. One bite and we were both saying "This is the real thing. This tastes like NY." We've been to San Francisco and were disappointed in a couple of Chinese restaurants there, for goodness sake, because we didn't think it was as good as NY's Chinese food. So to find a Chinese restaurant that good in College Station was a very nice surprise.

What isn't a nice surprise is this changing weather..... but...... it is what it is. NY is going to get another snowstorm at the end of this week, my cousins tell me.... they're looking at possibly ten more inches, to add to the eighteen inches they've already had (which is no longer pretty and bright-white). I guess if I have to walk into the barn and turn off the water valve when the temperature is on its way to 32 degrees, then I shouldn't be complaining. And didn't I say that last year anyway? That I wasn't going to complain about the weather anymore?

Okay. This is not a complaint. It is simply a statement of the fact: this weather is way too cold for this part of the state.