Barrage of photos, and some text.

We're having a white Christmas. The snow has begun to shrink and melt slightly, but more is on the way. I'm a little worried about the roof. It's an old house. The roof pitch is steep (about 45 degrees) but there's still a lot of snow up there.

I'm also likely to go out with the (pitifully small, inadequate for snow) shovel and dig a sort of dry zone around the house. We have enough basement leak issues without the snow melt contributing. This is close to a week of precipitation just waiting to carve a channel in the floor down there. Ah, the joys of owning an old, old house.

I ended up going on an errand today. Mom accidentally sent a gift my brother had purchased for his wife to us instead of her. If it were just a gift from Mom I'd have waited until the roads were clear but Paul's over in Iraq. The least I can do for him is trudge to the Post Office and send this to his wife in Hawaii. So out I went.

My wife is on Snow Day Number Five over the last week and a half. Paid. If Friday is snowed out she'll have this whole week off. We both wish she had warmer maternity clothes. The stuff she has is fine for work & home and usual weather here, but romping in icy snow? Not so much. So she's trying to get stuff done around here, like painting rooms (and yes, we're using Low- to No-VOC paint, which the OB/GYN has approved).

I did get out over the last day and a half & snap a few pictures.

The dog doesn't like this weather. Despite the comfy duds, his feet get cold. As well, his attention gesture is a massive head-bang of a sneeze. Outside this means dunking his head in a snowbank.


snooks' gnarled hand is reaching forth from our downspout.



Hey, snooks: No tripod. Just sayin'.






This should give you an idea as to the snowfall, sans drifting.


The view from inside my car.


At first I thought this was our next Christmas card.


Then I took this.


The view off our porch.



With huge trees come huge branches. Which, when they fall, become hugely dangerous missiles which could pretty easily make huge holes in people. This has happened in windstorms. The falling, not the holes in people. There is one branch already detached, sitting across several others, waiting to fall. It's about 50' off the ground, so we can't get to it. Lower branches are looking particularly heavily laden with ice and snow:



( More icy plants. )

I peeled these off the plant in front of the house and gave them to my wife. The leaves the ice had coated had curled or pulled away, so I broke off a few of the more interesting ones and handed her a weird ice present. She loved them.