Notes from Maine - 2026/01/25

January 25, 2026

I’m certain it’s not interesting to hear about the weather, especially when a lot of places are having challenging weather right now, but it is Cold. I’m rearranging my whole schedule to accommodate this frigid trend. I have to remind myself that I moved here on purpose. I was the youngest of young adults when I packed everything into my car and drove north. I could have gone west or south. Going east would have been a short trip since I was less than a hundred miles from the ocean, but it was also an option. I had certainty about where I wanted to live, but that certainty was backed up by very little lived experience.

I’m not saying that I regret living in Maine. So far, it has been wonderful. I’m just not a huge fan of doing chores outside for an hour when the temperature begins with a dash.

I’ve learned a tiny amount of information about Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, the person who invented the strange temperature scale that we still use around here. I like to picture him living in the Canary Islands where he set 0° at the lowest temperature that he could even conjure in his wildest dreams. To him, our current weather would be apocalyptic. That’s not true though. He moved from Poland to the Netherlands where he lived and worked his adult life, and I’m sure he must have encountered very cold temperatures. He just set zero at the lowest temperature that he could create with a mixture of salt, water, and ice. I know it’s not important what scale we use for indicating the temperature. It’s not rational to get irritated by negative numbers on the thermometer. In at least this one case, I’m fine with being irrational.

Celsius is a huge improvement, but it’s hardly better. Somehow it irks me that most of the comfortable temperatures start with a two. Forgive me if you’re a big fan of the number 2, but it’s like, the worst number. I want to glance at the first digit of a temperature and have a sense of whether I need to switch from a sweatshirt to a t-shirt, or jeans to shorts. This is yet another case where I’m fine being irrational.

I don’t title these essays, but if I did, a good title could be, “Grumpy old man shakes his fist at numbers.” January is almost over. Then, after February, I can complain about the mud for a while and then the heat. 

There’s always something to complain about, if I look hard enough. Let me tell you about things I really enjoy about this time of year. In the winter up here, I can really focus on things. If it’s a hot, sunny summer day I might have a nagging feeling that I should be OUTSIDE and DOING SOMETHING, when I really want to focus on some project in the house. We have precious few beautiful days around here and you have to enjoy them while you can. In the winter, there’s no FOMO involved with spending the entire day organizing my workshop or taking an extra hour before going to the feed store to get rid of some clutter at the dump. 

Over the past few weeks I built and hung about a million shelves in my “electronics room.” All the spools of wire are on rods and all the circuit boards are in racks. I got all the tools off the bench and put them on low shelves so they’re accessible but don’t clutter the workspace. I’m about eighty percent done with that project and I can’t wait to finish. It’s about twenty times more work than finishing the closet shelves and drawers in my bedroom, but fifty times more interesting. I’ll just keep folding and stacking my jeans on a stool for now. I’ve been doing that for years and it’s only a mild inconvenience every single day. I might change bedrooms anyway. It’s easier to work on a room that I’m not currently living in. I moved to the first floor years ago when Finn had knee surgery. Maybe I should be an upstairs person again. On the second floor I’ll be closer to the clouds in case I need to shake my fist at those too.

I have to get moving. It’s too chilly to sit in one place and I have more chores to do before the snow comes.