Happy February 1st. We're now only one month away from what is usually warmer weather in this area and some abating of the bad stuff. It's cold, but not nearly as uncomfortable as in my other stomping grounds. Unfortunately, the winter chill is not going to fade away without leaving a few more dead soldiers. It does not give up easily. Yesterday was a bear of a day with the wind whipping away most of the day. Around here it's not the temperature that gives us a problem, it's the wind, and there's no real way to windproof and old wooden boat though I've tried. This morning we woke up to a much warmer boat (no wind), and though a bit of snow is predicted there will be no wind.

New subject. My latest discovery (thanks to buddy Rob F) is SKYPE! No hype! Foote had not tried it but told me he'd been hearing it was pretty good, and it is. I've downloaded it, bought it for a year ($14.95 special) and now can make unlimited calls anywhere in North America, have 100 free minutes in Europe, then only 2.1 cents per minute after that. One has to use a headset, but I purchased a good one, and the results are really good. That's going to be very handy for us when we are on the road. Just plug the laptop into broadband and start making free calls. From what I can gather Skype is expanding and growing exponentially with over 8 mil callers on line at any given time. That's pretty astounding, given that they just started in 2003. Say hello to a couple new billionaires for putting together another better tech mousetrap.

On the home front, it's quiet here with one couple moving off their boat (just two slips down from us) and moving into a brand new townhouse. Boo...we'll miss their company. Now there are only four permanents on this dock. We hardly ever see our next door neighbor, one fellow is really struggling with arthritis, and the last one lives on a huge motor yacht at the end of the dock (we just say "How ya doin'?") and has a monster mercedes at the other end. So it's pretty quiet for now, but once the frost is past the weekend warriors will come a-roarin', laughing, hooting and hollering and de-winterizing their toys. It will be an interesting transformation to watch.