Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The Christmas present that cried wolf:

Panzer did his job keeping all mice still. And we had a lovely Christmas at home.

However, the flu hit the next day and we’ve been slowly recovering for the last week. Fortunately, with all of us vaccinated, the flu has been only bad, not the super terrible that is making the news.

But back to crying wolf: I saw a news story which convinced me it really would be good to have a NOAA weather radio and so both Sarah and Robert got these Midland radios under the tree.

We might have taken heed when the alarms went off and the lights started to strobe the morning after Christmas. It seemed to be a test of the emergency broadcast system.

But we did not take heed, we took that as a sign that the emergency function works well.

However, we did not need to be alerted to the snow squalls in the foothills to the west of us at 3:00 this morning (as we were tucked into our cozy beds and getting the sleep needed to recover from the flu).

Nor did we need to know about the special marine warning at 4:15am.

So now, the radio is quiet, with the battery (which seems pretty beefy) removed. And we’ll have to think about when we want to be more aware of weather emergencies and when we think sleep is preferable to knowing what might be happening outside and unlikely to impact us.

It is reassuring to know the emergency function works, and it’s plenty loud and flashy to wake us up.