Day 21.

The sun is out, sorta, and it's a little colder today. I need to do some stuff around the cabin, and I'd like to take a long walk through the woods at some point. There's a football-field-sized chunk of ice that broke off from the channel and drifted very slowly onto the lake, and the cold temperatures have re-frozen some of the river. But for that, and for the snow the past few days, it's been busy out there, and Annyong is having a blast chasing angry little red squirrels around.

Went to the Winnie Store yesterday, where I was hit on by a very cute Chippewa girl driving a BMW with tribal plates. This was a new experience for me, but I simply finished filling my water jugs and moseyed on out, because I am a well-trained husband. I've also apparently befriended the kid who works there, a sixteen-or-so-year-old who was seemingly trying to impress me with how cool he is. "I think I need a smoke break," he told me, lackadaisically.

As I was carrying my beer and water jugs back in from the van to the cabin, I had a conversation with the dog, as I generally do, about how he was not helping me at all. "You're a lazy bastard," I told him, and he took this to be a game, darting around me and running, at full clip, rings around the cabin, until it devolved into me chasing him through the yard, shouting at the top of my lungs, "LAAAAZY BAAASTARD! LAAAAZY BAAAAASTARD," him barking joyously at me until both of us were exhausted and covered in snow. This would, I imagine, have been an interesting tableau to anybody who might have come across it, but of course, no one did.

I'm going to track down and chop some more deadfall today, since the woodpile is really starting to look meager. I'm halfway through the book, and those 60,000 words have been well worth it. I'll get back down to writing this evening, but I'd like to be around people tonight, too. Maybe I'll grab a bite to eat and a beer somewhere.