On a cold winter's night

This week, I was in Boston, cold as I cabbed it from the hotel to work, and back.  The Amtrak station in Stamford is impossibly bright in the early morning before the sun has actually risen, and I find a spot where I can watch the board to see if the train will arrive on time.  I eye the line and dunkin donuts, but stick to my guns that it is like drinking gasoline and do not get any.

I wait until the appointed hour and walk over to the bridge above the train track.  A local train always comes in before the Amtrak train, and I look to see it arrive and leave before I descend to the freezing track below.  This week the train was only about 5 minutes late, but it was very cold and I found a bit of shelter in the stairwell.

Returning from Boston on Thursday evening the train was late leaving South Station, 'a slight delay' and I was waiting for it in the unglamorous back-bay station, which reminds me that urban renewal in 1976 wasn't all that fine.  The train is about 30 minutes late so I made my way back up the escalator and got myself a plain old-fashioned dunkin donut which is so heavy it keeps you full and warm for many a fine day.  Almost as good as a New York street pretzel for that purpose

 The train arrived and I found my way home.  I got a text on they way that said that I shouldn't be alarmed that a pipe had frozen.  The contractor had failed to insulate an outside wall, and a pipe burst and made a sponge out of the living room ceiling.

 Arriving home, there were many a bucket around and most of the water had been caught.  I jotted a note to the contractor with the news, and suggested that he might want to go after the subcontractor who had failed in his mission.   He called and said he'd make good.

There are five fans running in the living room now, drying out the ceiling which has a bout a dozen holes carved in it.  And ,  I am sitting by the fire enjoying being warm on this cold winter night amid this long cold snap.  Coldest week in 17 years.  So they say.