Nine or ten degrees Fahrenheit

It reached about eleven degrees sometime today according to my favorite weather site for St Paul. But the sun was out and the sky was blue for much of the day - until it morphed to black when the sun went down. (What's with that?). I'm determined to walk outside for an extended time each day this January - when I can stand the cold and especially on days when my tennis schedule is empty. Today was one of those days when it took some self convincing to get out into the great expanse of winter. By eleven, I was ready, and sufficiently dressed, I trekked around the neighborhood for about forty-five minutes. It was brisk, but not bitter. So after lunching on self produced soup and sandwich I went out again. This time the sun was pretty high in the sky and very blue. I stopped at Como on my way to a grocery store to top up the larder. Como is frozen over and there are currently two ice fish houses on the lake. I guess the ice is thick enough for this activity, although there is an aerator on the lake which produces unpredictable thin areas of the ice. I'm not a partaker in this activity, but it's nice to see that there are people who are brave enough to put up a fishing house, and also likely brave enough to consume the fish they might capture in a city lake. The darker area in the foreground is the shadow of the large building which houses the Black Bear Crossing cafe.

Winter doesn't last as long as it seems sometimes, but we are at the nadir of the temperature range for the state. The days are getting longer now, and the coldest part of the year will be behind us by about the third week of January. I think I'm going to make it to spring again this year.

Tennis resumes tomorrow at Fort Snelling. My two days off from the action are enough this time of year. The geezer guys will be itching for competition tomorrow, because they were off a couple of days, too, and I know they'll be running me around. It'll be my second time on court in this spanking new year.