...Christmas in Canada. (It's actually a lot colder here than on Manitoulin.) This morning, wave after wave of sparrows came undulating in to the bird feeders, and at one time there may have been 50 birds on the feeders and on the ground. But these sparows are flightly, the whole flock exploding at once, for no apparent reason, and disppearing into the shrubbery, only to come swooping back moments later.

So unpleasant outide today that even Pax was anxious to cut the walking crap and get back into something more hospitable.

We spent the morning in Tibet, on an Irene guided tour, where it was also cold. Facsinating place, but not really where I'd choose to live, if I had a choice. Irene spent a number of nights sleeping on a pallet with well-below-freezing wind whistling into the 'dorm', then sharing a thermos of warm water with her three other dorm mates for her morning ablutions.

Funerals are interesting, if the one Irene showed us is representative; place the body on a canoe-like float, light it on fire, and send it down the river. (Perhaps they don't realize that we can't all live up-stream.)

Just as Irene was leaving, James picked me up for lunch, at Paddy's Pub in Fort Atkinson, where we shared a pulled-pork taco (talk about ethnic) , and continued discussing ways to turn Whitewater into a good place to live. On our way home we stopped at the Bridge to Nowhere and walked it about half a mile into deadly windchill. By the time we made it back to the car we had designed the world's greatest linear park. (Obviously an archetypical example of brain-freeze.)