2 January 2008 Three questions are to be settled: How far can I get into 2008 without yielding to my addiction to Spider? What does semolina do for bread? Having run out of semolina, I'm making a pizza-and-a-loaf with just yeast, salt, lecithin, one pint of water, and five cups of whole-grain, stone-ground white-wheat flour. Seemed to make a tough-enough dough. 3 January 2008 I never did remember the third question, but "How long will it be before I date an entry 2007? would be good. There is snow all over the lake, so it must have frozen during the night. But I never looked out that way after suppertime, so I don't know that it didn't freeze yesterday. It's supposed to start warming up and raining Saturday, so it probably won't provide any skating. Bread came out all right. I asked Dave whether the pizza was different from the previous one, and he said it tasted as though I'd added corn meal. When we ate the heels of the loaf, the crust seemed to have a cornbready texture. We had Martha's cinnamon butter on the heels. 11:17 -- the snow is thawing around the mouth of the creek. 6 January 2008 Another pizza-and-a-loaf today. Neither as brown as I like, but quite edible. 7 January 2008 Washday, and I have a blanket-committee meeting tonight. Dave plans to go shopping. Dave opened the curtains when we got up, and remarked that the ice is all gone and the lake is wrinkled again. I commented that the birds were also all gone, then the dime dropped and we checked the Wildman's tree: there was *one* bird out there: a bald eagle. Also, we soon noticed, a flock of coots being very close-knit and inconspicuous, but they quietly paddled away. The juvenile showed up later, and the adult flew away for a while. Don't know who is out there now; without using the telescope, it's hard to be sure it's a bird, let alone see the white head. In message , -- Joy Beeson http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/ http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/ http://www.timeswrsw.com/craig/cam/ (local weather)