Important Lessons I Have Learned

In much the same way as my (entire) time in Japan, my first few months in the north have been filled with Learning Experiences^TM.

I've learned that as much as I hate dress pants, I can't wear skirts to work if I am walking from the Upper Bench to the office and the temperature is below -10^o. Also, I've been informed that people are going to look at me funny if I do wear skirts to work.

No matter how expensive food from the hardware store is, I will buy it because I have impulse control issues.

When you buy half a cord of firewood cut to fireplace length, so you can enjoy evening fires in your fireplace, make sure you also have an axe to chop the logs in half, otherwise you've just paid a bunch of money for something you can't really use yet. (Good job!)

Make non-work friends in addition to your work-friends. (This one can be hard if you're socially awkward like me, but try.) Work can suck the life out of you, and it's nice to talk to people who aren't connected to work at all.

Make more quilts. You never know when the temperature, which has been hovering around the 0^o mark for the past few days, will suddenly plummet, leaving you shivering in bed at midnight, unwilling to go make a hot water bottle. Quilts are always handy.