New Year, New Post

As we are three days into the new year (2018), this will be the first blog post. We have just come out of the approximately ten days of below normal temperatures finally getting above zero farenheit for the first time yesterday. A noticeable improvement. We survived the extreme cold but I had a couple of incidents with frozen water lines needing thawing.
Had the traditional family gathering for supper here on New Year's day. It is the one day of the year when this old house is almost too small but we made it work.

Now that the weather has warmed up I felt inspired to do some serious work on the "new" Merc. Got the seized up flathead almost out of the car but I had to leave it hanging on the hoist as I ran into a little problem and didn't want to work overtime. Seems I forgot to support the front of the transmission or disconnect the speedometer cable. No harm done but I need to find a chain to hang up the front of the transmission before I can push the car away from the hoist. Tomorrow is another day and I have a plan.

Thought I flipped this pic but it appears upside down here. 

Engine hanging on the hoist for now. 

New Year Day Tradition

Seems it has been a tradition for longer  than I remember for the family to gather here for a meal to mark the start of a new year. As seen in this old photo from about 40 years ago. Only two survive from that photo. Although  the missing ones have been replaced by younger  members, friends that are almost family. Seems we still have about the same number around the table for 2017.
There may have been occasions when the weather/roads forced moving the date of the gathering a week or so later.

Our weather continues it's roller coaster ride of above to below normal temps. The snow is below normal but just enough  to keep everything white without needing to shovel much.
-30F this morning but it had warmed up to -15F when I took a few aerial photos.
The smoke in the photo is from a pile of burning branches I had gathered through the summer. I figured this cold weather was the best time to work at burning them and keeping warm too.