The ski resort town of Killington, Vermont has voted to attempt to secede from the state of Vermont, and to join the state of New Hampshire, which is 25 miles to its east.

***Story here|http://www.boston.com/dailynews/062/region/Killington_residents_endorse_p:.shtml***.

The Killington town officials must now draft a petition to present to the Vermont legislature for approval or rejection. I tell ya, the fun never stops up here in New England.

…it’s COLD outside.

As of 10:24 p.m., Thursday, January 15, the temperature in Beverly is -6 degrees Fahrenheit.

With wind chill…

Negative 30.

Almost all Boston-area schools have already closed for tomorrow. Frostbite can set in to exposed areas of skin within 10-15 minutes. It’s dangerous.

As an aside, this was the first Christmas I can remember where I was not given any calendars as gifts. I actually had to purchase a calendar myself! Thankfully, the choice was not a hard one: I purchased the ***2004 Demotivators Calendar|http://www.thinkgeek.com/cubegoodies/toys/65de/*** made by ***Despair, Inc.|http://www.despair.com/***. 12 months of depressing, demotivating, and demoralizing artwork and memorable quotes. Yep, and it’s hanging on the wall of my cubicle at work even as I write this.

Anyway, according to my lovely new calendar, Monday, January 12 is Procrastinator’s New Year’s Day. Just thought you’d like to know.

Maestro James Jorgenson, founder of the Gordon Symphony Orchestra, ***passed away on December 28 at the age of 77|http://www.gordon.edu/media/jorgenson.htm***.

I spent three years at Gordon under the direction of the Maestro. I will remember him as a kind, creative, slightly kooky individual who was always loved by his students. There was something about that Wisconsin accent, and the way he always pronounced “sorry” as “soar-ree”.

May you continue making music in heaven!

Who are you… ooh ooh.. ooh ooh…. I really wanna know.

Could you be the ***King of England|http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8266043%5E13780,00.html***?

Or perhaps you’ve lived most of your life as a black man, but then you discover that you ***may not be black at all|http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/Nightline/SciTech/racial_identity_031228-1.html***.

What a wild, wild world.

***Keep those almanacs out of sight!|http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/12/29/fbi.almanacs.ap/index.html***

This is a couple of days late, but we wanted to congratulate our friends Jeremy and Angela on their recent engagement! Jeremy gave us a call on Tuesday night to let us know the good news. We have been very lucky to have them as friends and we are glad to see them taking this next step together!

For those who don’t know the back-story, Jeremy and I met at Gordon College and were roommates senior year. After we graduated, we looked for an apartment together, along with Art Lawry. We found an apartment in Woburn, and I lived there until August 2002, just before Becky and I got married. At around that point, Jeremy started dating Angela, who was living on Cape Cod. Jeremy continued to live up in Woburn and make the trek down to see Angela. Jeremy was my Best Man at our wedding, and Angela was there with him (which is where that photo is from). Since then, Jeremy has moved down to Hyannis on the Cape so that he could spend more time with Angela… but we do occasionally have the chance to get together. Jeremy has been a great friend and I’m so happy to see things coming together for him and Angela.

Congratulations!!

Boston.com ran a great little article today called ***A northeaster by the numbers|http://www.boston.com/news/weather/articles/2003/12/08/a_northeaster_by_the_numbers_from_videos_to_pizza/***.

Our parking lot still wasn’t plowed out this morning, so I walked to the train station, took the train in one stop to Salem, and caught a ride in to work from there with my colleagues Win and Simon. I ended up getting in to work just 30 minutes late.

Becky and I ventured forth yet again this afternoon to see the impact this Nor’easter has had on the city of Beverly. Photos of today’s adventure start about halfway down the ***fourth page of the Nor’easter gallery|http://gallery.prwdot.org/noreaster?page=4***.

As far as we could see, the following businesses were open today:

Dunkin Donuts
Bell’s Market
Borah’s Market
Family Dollar

I’m sure a few more were open, but we didn’t get that far down Cabot Street.

The plan for the rest of the day is to hole up in the apartment! Supposedly things will be tapering off this evening, and everyone will be getting back to work on Monday…

Just updated: 32 inches of snow in Beverly!!!