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" Today is our older son&amp;#039;s fifth birthday. So far, we&amp;#039;ve been been sledding, drilling (he&amp;#039;s obsessed with drills; for his birthday, I gave him an antique hand drill), and reading. In other words, whatever he wants. It&amp;#039;s rather exhausting.  Speaking of exhausting, we&amp;#039;re in a cloudy stretch, which has forced quite of bit of generator action of late. Bummer. Because we run our house so lean, there&amp;#039;s really not a lot of power-sucking fat we can cut, short of candlelight and shutting down the water pump. Maybe we should be more willing to go without, but then again, it&amp;#039;s pretty easy to fire up the generator for a few hours and be able read without squinting. It&amp;#039;s not like we&amp;#039;re running our generator to power our 50-inch plasma TV (not that there&amp;#039;s anything wrong with that;)).  Finlay&amp;#039;s birthday typically marks the time of year when our generator use begins to wane dramatically. Indeed, after this shot of snow (about a foot expected, YES!), we&amp;#039;re forecast to see some sun on Wednesday and later into the week. It&amp;#039;s also supposed to be very cold; Wednesday&amp;#039;s highs are not going to get out of the single digits. A foot of fresh snow, single digit temps: That&amp;#039;s winter in Vermont. I&amp;#039;m glad to see it finally arrive. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a1240/4211707/>