Gertee holds up in 57 below!

57 below makes 20 below feel so warm! I'm busy taking advantage of the "heat wave" to stock up on wood and water and take the garbage out to the burn hole. Of course it's snowing again which creates its own challenges, but overall I'm happy to report this bigger 20 foot Gertee is just as worthy of winter as my 18 footer was last year. I didn't cover the skylight with insulation because I really wanted the daylight, and it hasn't created any noticeable problems with holding in the heat. When it gets past 40 below, most everyone's windows are covered in frost, so when my skylight turned to ice I wasn't concerned. I am glad I added the main post to help hold up the roof though because I've got quite a snow load up there now.

I thought my chainsaw died because it wouldn't start for days even though I was bringing it inside. Had to break down and ask my neighbors to saw me some wood. Finally figured out that where I was putting it by the door was below freezing and it was just froze up. Put a couple rugs along the doorway where the cold air was coming in. I've been wearing my new boots inside and didn't realize how cold the floor was.

Tim gave me a ride up to the Merc to pick up dog food and stopped at my mailbox on the way. He opened the automatic passenger side window part way down so I could lean out and grab it, but I still had to open the door to reach my box. When I shut the door the window glass exploded and busted all over the place. In all my winters up here I can't remember that ever happening before.

Only three months left of winter... we're half-way to spring and gaining daylight!

I want to thank all the sweet people who are writing and sending me their prayers. It's very reassuring to know there are a lot of Christians who don't feel the need to attack me for my position on Zionism. The last thing I ever wanted to do was get involved in the religious dialectic. Obviously that didn't work out like I hoped. My prayer is that someday America returns to honoring our guarantee of religious freedom and stops thinking we have one established state religion. I can assure you nobody is going to like being forced to worship the communitarian god, especially the genuinely religious people. Somehow we must find a way to put our differences aside and come together to defeat our common enemy. Divide and conquer isn't just a theory, and freedom of religion isn't just an ideal, it's our rule of law. The U.S. government successfully banned native Americans from practicing their religions for almost 100 years. They just got their rights back in the 70s and I'm sure they'd like to keep it. We are a country of many diverse cultures and the communitarians assume, based on the dialectical conflicts now happening, that they must be the ones to teach us how to be more "tolerant" of each other. Every time one religious group attacks another they feed the flames that lead directly into the false solution. The communitarians know exactly how powerful religious wars can be. We don't need Etzioni and his crew of "negotiators" in Palestine to show us their expertise in this arena, do we?