About this time up here in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, the annual tradition of putting up the plastic on the windows takes place. Through storm windows and sashes, the cold of the northern winter will find it’s way through without fail, chilling the bones and upping the fuel bill to amounts unbelievable. 
So with the coming of our latest feline, we here at our household have established a new Thanksgiving tradition. Putting the heavy duty, couldn’t drive a truck through type plastic over the "heat shrink" window stuff to keep the aforementioned fur bearing mini-monster from tearing it all up. If there’s a window with plastic on it, Dingo and his plastic shredding cohorts in crime are guaranteed to rip it to shreds. He’s an extremely bad influence.
Thankfully, not all windows are feline accessible but the eleven windows on the porch turned room (the "loong" room) are cat heaven. Except for the ones filled with various species of cactus which is an excellent "plastic ripping, cat in the window" deterrent by the way.
So, my wonderful wife, armed with plastic, tape, scissors, hair dryer and squirt bottle (for the cats) has taken this onerous task upon herself. I just standby to help when her curses at the cats, who are doing their best to thwart all her hard work, become too loud. (such fun!).
So will our house be kept warm and cozy during the "long haul" where temps can get well below zero? Will that window armor that my lady worked so hard to install hold against the claws of feline tenacity? Only time will tell. meanwhile, we’ll keep the long johns at the ready.
Well, after that massive "virus bomb" hit my poor PC, I’ve spent the last two days rebuilding the OS from scratch. And thanks to the XP PRO install disk I was able to replace just the OS initially, albeit a much older version, and get the ‘puter up long enough to salvage most of my files.
