As you might imagine if you’ve been following the New Joy of Jell-O Project for a while, I was really looking forward to posting the last recipe in the book today. Alas, it is not to be.

Yea, though I did dutifully avail myself of the flu shot provided to me gratis by MIT back in October, it appears that I have nevertheless succumbed to the flu. Or a flu, it might be more accurate to say. It started innocently enough at the beginning of the week with an inconvenient amount of nose-blowing, progressed to a fully-stuffed head and a fever, and in the last day or so has worked it’s way into my lungs. Science has, for once, let me down.

Meanwhile, we’re enjoying (that’s sarcasm – don’t blink or you’ll miss it) what must be a record cold streak here in the northeast U.S., with temperatures topping out in the teens (Fahrenheit) and heading down into single digits with wind chill below zero. It started about the same time I was getting sick (how convenient) and is expected to go on for another week or so from, like, now. Unfortunately, the heating system at Freak Mountain has trouble coping with cold like this.

When I started to write this, both upstairs and downstairs were below 60℉, and I was thumbing this post out on my phone because Bryan was using the power cable from our wifi router to charge the battery in the thermostat downstairs, so I needed to use LTE to access WordPress. I found myself thinking of Sylvia Plath at the end.

Well, we’ve got the wifi back, and the furnace is sorted (for now), and it all just feels like such a fitting end for the long and arduous year that was 2017. I gladly invite 2017 to let the door hit its ass, multiple times, on the way out.

I’m hoping to get back to that last recipe in the coming week, if only because it involves using the oven and so will warm things up a bit.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln…

Happy New Year!