Frozen

Frozen.

At night, all I want to do is get home, eat dinner, get into my flannel pajamas, fuzzy slippers and robe, and curl up somewhere and hibernate.

The best of all possible inventions is the electric blanket, especially when Bob goes up and turns it on a couple of hours before I go to bed.

I know it could be worse; Bob said last night that we could be living in Minnesota. But then, I figure, I'd be better prepared--I'd have a warmer coat, for one thing. It just seems like kind of a waste of money when it really doesn't stay this cold here for very long, but I guess I should get one one of these winters.

And Bob keeps telling me that it will be Spring soon, and I know that it will be, eventually, but right about now, Spring feels very far away.

Speaking of frozen, this story about penguins is absolutely fascinating.

There are 46 penguins at the San Francisco Zoo, accustomed to sitting on their butts all winter and being handfed. A few weeks ago, six new penguins were introduced to the ones already at the zoo; the new ones were Magellanic penguins, who apparently migrate, swimming, all winter.

The new penguins somehow conveyed to the resident penguins that they had to swim! Now! C'mon!! Let's go! And they're all swimming around and around and around their little pool like their lives depend on it, staggering out at dusk. They're all getting thinner and some of them look exhausted.

"Now they're thinking, 'Didn't we just see that palm tree?' " Tollini said. "Some of them haven't swum this much in five years."