Things are not bad, exactly, right now, and I am not alone in feeling the new year has not brought as much Newness as it might. As Paul told me last week (this would be Friday the 2nd) when I remarked that the radiator pipe bursting in the living room on not even nearly the coldest night so far seemed like bad luck, "No, it's GOOD luck because it's not 16 below and your house won't freeze with the furnace off."

Which is true, of course, and you would be pleased by how little damage a centimeter (2.54") or so of water on the living room floor can do. A few paperbacks were ruined and most of a ream of paper. The floor tilts toward the part of the basement designed for things to drip into, and it did.

A copper pipe with an aneurysm is a strange thing, but there it is. I had just come back to Henniker after a Cultural day in Boston seeing the Assyrian exhibit at the Museum of Fine Art (The Assyrians made really good giant stone strip cartoons with cuneiform captions in small enough fonts they must have expected people to be seeing them quite close up. And they must have expected a fair number of literate viewers, or at least literate tour guides. I was unhappy to see they practiced canned hunting and had 'lion hunts' that began with letting the lions out of a cage). I came in through the kichenette and had a small glass of wine and I was really looking forward to going to bed, when the sound reached me as I walked toward the staircase of running water where no running water should be.

The cats were quite excited and thought the soaking rug was way cool. Marten rolled on it.

I thought it was really nice of Paul, the contractor and plow-guy who sometimes works on my kitchen redo, to come out at 11 pm. and show me the cutoff again, and to fix the radiator the next day. My daughter has suggested killing him, and I can understand that point of view, but it's mean and leads to bad habits* and would not really get the kitchen done.

Anyway, the floor is not ruined and honestly the living room is not much messier. I am not traumatized but I have to admit going up to bed includes a portion of apprehension it never used to. Bad enough with the wolves and burglars under the bed to worry about.

Since then I have returned Toby and the Only Beloved Daughter to New Jersey, which pretty well killed this past week, and I have decided to spend some time working with the easier (if there are any) knotwork cable designs in Viking Knitting, because apparently I cannot do Arwen. I know I have weaknesses (chirality is involved) but I don't seem to be able to read even one damn line without messing up. Maybe Sarah will tutor me. She owes me, because if she had not run out of frog Tree Heather at almost the end of her scarf I would not have stopped at WEBS in Northampton.

My self-control was sapped. Colrain in Navaho Red is very nice. The cable looks easier than Arwen's.

*If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.--Thomas DeQuincey