Dangerously high winds, potential sub-zero temps by morning. Shares needed.

No new photos tonight. We sent the guys home at noon; 40-mph winds with 60-mph gusts are too dangerous for outdoor work, especially when everything right now needs to be done on the scaffolds.

Yes, that was what our day was like. You haven't lived until you've experienced rapid-fire directional changes in those 60-mph gusts while in one of these tin cans, lemmetellya. The whole thing rocks, and not in a good way. We also got our first snow down here — flurries only, but the massive storm hovering over the peaks to the east right now means they'll be white by morning.

Everything will also be frozen by morning. The temperature was at its warmest at dawn; it's dropped consistently since. The weather site I use says it'll get down to 10 above here tonight; the one Wings gets on his cell phone says it'll be nine below zero by 7 AM tomorrow. And, of course, Indian Killer Utility can't handle a little wind, and we had a complete power outage for more than an hour at mid-afternoon; took two full hours to warm this place back up again to any kind of reasonable level. I've been wearing thermals all day, but I've had to have a jacket on indoors until a little while ago. [And, yes, we're both still half-flattened by this bug, so freezing winds are not helping much.]

The guys' recent need to be off for personal business has set progress back a little; they probably won't be able to start the actual plastering until next Wednesday, and that means we're running out of time. Oh, it's supposed to get up to 50 again over the weekend, but we're also supposed to get a snowstorm next week, so ::shrugs:: no way to tell at this point, but we are genuinely up against it now.

We have got to raise the rest of this final multiple-stages-in-one, and relatively fast. So we need consistent daily shares of our YouCaring page via the widgets provided, especially the widget code at lower right that gives you the running tally shown above. We also need consistent daily shares of Wings's site, which pays the bills and also goes toward construction. Testimonials help, too. And folks considering holiday commissions should contact me now to get your orders into Wings's workbench queue; he's spending most days in the studio now. And don't forget, we only need to raise another $421 to meet the $1,000 match that's on offer (details here).

Many thanks to everyone for your help in getting us this far. Unfortunately, we have a very long way to go to get this place habitable, and very little time in which to do it. Please help us get as far as we can before winter weather makes more progress impossible; among other things, we're going to need to raise a minimum of $7K for the septic system, and that is hanging over my head like a stormcloud right now, so we really need everyone to help by sharing the links consistently.

Thanks, everybody.