1. If strep throat and a whiteout is enough to keep you from going back and rescuing your favorite riding crop that you left in the indoor arena, you have no business riding horses. (It has this amazing squishy handle, so much better than any other crop ever.) 2. If strep throat and a whiteout is enough to keep you from going to the barn in the first place, you have no business riding horses. 3. Here is a great tip: Sometimes, if the furnace stops working, your house will get really cold. 4. When it's fixed, your house will get warm again, and you can start watching all those reality shows stored on the DVR in the coldest room in the house that is no longer cold. 5. Things that make a sore throat feel better: cough drops, tea with honey, chocolate, Ruffles, Kraft MacnCheese, and medicine. 6. Things that don't make a sore throat feel better: Juice. Why do sick people drink juice? 7. Dan has been letting me watch a great deal of RFD-TV lately.  I think pretty soon we&

Some cold winter weekend lessons: I learned that if you squeeze a water bottle that's half frozen in your car, the plastic might be extra brittle and break, and that the half unfrozen part might spill on everything, mostly into your cupholder if you're lucky. The solution to this could be to just put the broken bottle back in the cupholder and forget about it. Because then when you get in your car Monday morning, and everything is fully frozen, you just pull the broken plastic water popsicle out of the cupholder, and throw it away. Bonus: It may or may not take the crumbs that were in your cupholder with it, leaving your cupholder cleaner than it was the day you bought the car. * * * * I learned that plaster walls are the serious downside to old home ownership. I built a custom display rack in the living room for Dan's records, which turned out absolutely awesome. Unless you sort of pound on it, and then you might notice that plaster falls out of the screw holes. l

1. A moment I experienced hundreds of times over 2 years: Being on the DC metro and going under the Potomac. You have to pay attention to even notice you're going downhill, until suddenly your ears pop. Then you know you've hit the bottom and will start back up to the other side, soon to emerge at the Arlington National Cemetery stop. It's the first above-ground stop leaving DC on the blue line. You can see the river, the monuments, and to the other side, the white stones extending endlessly over the ridge. It is as mundane, smelly, and irreverent of a moment as one could ever ask for, until suddenly you think "I'm on a train, under the Potomac River, in Washington D.C., going to work, so that I can pay for my apartment." 2. Walking through innumerable palace rooms in the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. Before I went, I learned the names and events and places that carved Spain into our imagination, and it made every step of that jo