View From The Living Room Window At 4:00

A Sunday Stroll

Now that Winter has finally arrived and the gray, drizzle has gone back Seattle where it belongs (sorry Mike and Pete), we now have a proper January day. It's nice, -5 (23F), calm and clear. The pine forest begins about a 10-minute walk from home and it's soothing to the soul in any season. This monument, about 6 meters tall, is in the WWII cemetary here in Cesis. There are more than 300 names engraved in granite. This from a town of less than 10,000 people at that time. It is a place to ruminate and remember.

The Tagger Needs A Spell Checkeker...

I saw this today walking down an alley in the center of town. The guy on the right is Einars Repse, former Prime Minister and now a guy who ran over and killed a drunk on the highway. Oh, he also used to be the head of the Latvian Central Bank. 
 

Smokey Sunrise

The price of natural gas went up 30% last week (the Russians have us by the...), so now even more wood is being burned to keep warm, even though it was only 33F this morning. That's almost warm.

Nope, Not Yet...

Today we walked home from town through the park as 
we often do, and you can see it looks more like early April 
than almost mid January. We stopped and spoke with our 
neighbor, Nina, or actually Inga spoke with her. I don't 
speak Russian. She has lived in Latvia since the War when 
she was sent here by the Soviets as a teenager. She's seen 
plenty. 

Still Not Winter

Amazing as it seems to everyone here, we're still not 
experiencing anything like a normal winter. To me it 
feels like the Pacific Northwest where I grew up in 
Washington State.