White Almost-Christmas

For those of you who don't have the pleasure of snow for Christmas (yes, I'm talking to you, Amanda), here are a few pictures of our neighborhood taken earlier today. It's 8:00 PM as I write this, and the pictures were all taken late morning and early-to-mid afternoon. It's been snowing ever since, and is still coming down heavily outside my study window. I think our total accumulation will be somewhere around 14 to 16 inches...maybe as much as two feet.

This first picture was taken from our living room window. Those white lumps in the foreground are our cars...

This is from the same window, looking across the street and up the hill...

This picture looks toward the woods behind the house, from our bedroom window...

And finally, this picture looks out onto our deck from the kitchen...

If you listen closely tomorrow, you should be able to hear my muscles creaking and groaning as I try to shovel all that snow away.

Being snowed in has its advantages. Agnes got a lot of work done in the house today, and we finished putting the lights on the tree and decorating it. The lights were problematic - we have a 100-light strand on which only the last 50 lights actually lit...but I discovered that a little percussive maintenance (that is, banging them on the floor) seems to have jarred whatever was wrong back into shape. The tree is now up and beautiful, and all the lights work. Maybe I'll put up a picture of it tomorrow.

But for now, I think I'm ready for an early bedtime.

Have a good evening. Regular posts resume tomorrow.

Bilbo