I know the rest of the country has been hell frozen over, but we--delicate people--are not used to anything more than one day or two of frigid weather. So when we endured nearly ten days of absolutely unusually cold weather, the town nearly came to a halt. We all love to run to the fur vaults one or twice a winter, or bring out the leather, but nothing in the fourteen years I've lived here was like this. Most of the town's homes and apartments don't have heat, or at least not usable heat (so unused, you really can't stand the smell of burnt dust, so you hope that tomorrow it will be over). But, it wasn't; towards the end I was wearing sweat pants and a sweater over my flannel PJ's, and it still wasn't enough. Business froze as people huddled at home. Fortunately , things warmed up a bit today and the weekend promises temps near eighty. Good for us; it has been a tough year and a New Years in the upper seventies might be the harbinger of better times.