It's cold with a capital BRRRR. Today schools let out early and businesses closed due to dangerous windchills. The animals still need feeding, despite my polite requests for them to hibernate for a month or two.

While I'm home, barn chores are my responsibility. A responsibility which thankfully keeps my parents from pressuring me too much to find a real job. Hauling water to the horses is the part that gets me. The pump at the barn broke years ago, so water for the horses means hauling 5 gallon buckets, two at a time, over 100 yards of snowdrifts. The water sloshes up over the edges of the buckets and turns my coveralls to cement before I'm done. Would I rather be doing this than sitting in a stuffy classroom at Cornell? You betcha.

It's funny the little things you forget about a place. Like the way everyone leaves their vehicles running in the grocery store parking lot, the way cars are plugged in and still need to be started five minutes before they're driven anywhere. The way everyone in town knows who drives what, and the shit you get if it's your car that gets left overnight at the bar. Yesterday I was in town and stopped by Walmart to get a new journal and to pick up things to finish my photo albums. I got carded at the checkout counter: buying rubber cement. Apparently you have to be 16 in North Dakota to buy rubber cement. I'm not quite sure how to take this. Maybe I should stop wearing my hair in pigtails?

If you live in New Hampshire, how about a few votes for David Palmer? Check out his profile here. You can also have a look at him in the White House. Howard Dean out, David Palmer in.

Me, I have a date with the bathtub, sexy-sexy Jack Johnson, and another hour in the third longest day of Jack Bauer's life.