It seems that Old Man Winter has come to Kosovo. The temperature dropped last Thursday evening and by Saturday night, it was raining. Yesterday, there were big flakes of snow mixed in with the rain and the temperature was only 45ºF. I was freezing in the morning when I woke up and dragged out all my heaters. Unfortunately, Smokey had peed on a couple of the heaters so one is now outside on the patio for him...I can't seem to get rid of the nasty smell it gives off. And last night, I started my first wood fire of the season...ah, I was reminded of how nice a wood-fire is and how lovely it sounds :)
The power has started going off regularly again. It looks like for now the schedule with be four on, two off until it gets really cold. Then who knows what will happen! Last night I had one of those exasperating Kosovo moments. The power went out so I went outside to start the generator. Sometimes when it has been run for a couple days, it can be stubborn and difficult to start. So I was pulling, pulling, and pulling (starts like a lawnmower) but it wouldn't start. So, I went inside for a second to cool down...kicking the generator usually only hurts my foot :) Then I went outside and pulled, nothing, pulled, nothing, pulled...chug, chug, chug. YES! Got it started. Suddenly it was really bright inside. I thought for myself, wow, the generator is working really well. Then I realized, the power was back on *hehe* So, I turned off the generator and turned the tv back on. Ten minutes later, the power went off again. Grrrrr, I said to myself, I will wait five minutes to see if the power came back on. But it didn't so I turned on the generator for the next two hours.
I scored a hat-trick last night. Caught and killed three mice in the hallway with my old-fashioned, break-the-neck, nasty mouse traps. I'm sure there are more lurking in the hallway so I will reset them tonight and see what else I catch. The house I live in is 20 years old so in the winter, field mice can be a problem. We've had the darnedest time trying to find mouse-traps. The local markets don't seem to sell anything but luckily, I guess they have problems at Bondsteel (US base in Kosovo) because I found traps there :) So, with a little cheese and the properly placed trap I'm a deadly weapon against intruding mice *hehe*
