December has been too busy, and there have only been five days of it so far.
On the first, I took my girl to ski with her team at Lookout Pass because our local hill was not deep enough in the white stuff to open. I spent the day in the lodge and she spent the day out in blowing snow that would have been warmer if it was only freezing out. That day the temperature was in the single digits before windchill. We spend the night in nearby lodging so she could ski again with her team the next day as well. It turned out to be a good decision to avoid
the extra 200 or so miles on the road, as there were six inches of snow on my car when I went out in the morning. I used the shovel on the hood and the bumper, not just the ground. The second day in the snow was warmer, and the skiing was better because of all the new snow.
The third found me at home raking the pine needles that fell when the warm wind blew through and exposed them. If I listen to all the glowing reports of winter from the old timers, I would expect the first snowfall around the end of September and plan for complete snow cover through about May. Back in the day, it really fell and piled up. This year, it fell, I shoveled, it piled up and promptly melted. We are back where we started. I can even see the black roof on the shed again. I did not take any new pictures. Just check out the ones from August and you get the general idea.
The fourth found me juggling laundry and delivering my car to a shop across town for a new timing belt and another attempt at stopping an oil leak. I had been told repeatedly for at least a year that the reason for oil on the floor under my car was a leaking oil drain pan gasket. I finally replaced that when the oil drop between oil changes started to get scary. In addition, I also replaced a motor mount and a couple of other expensive items that ruptured when they moved the motor to get at the gasket. For the record, the gasket was $11. A cheap part by Toyota standards. The good news is that after they replaced the main crankshaft gasket while they were in there for the timing belt, the cardboard on the floor under the car is now clean.
Today I went to the local Museum of Art and Culture with the fourth grade class. It was interesting. Judging from some of the exhibits, I am thinking we need to invest in high quality display cases, open a gift shop and charge admission rather than cleaning out a certain house. We talked about what is art, what is a collection and why people collect things. My son and I both agreed that it was too bad my Mom could not be in on the discussion. They claimed to have 65K or so objects in the collection. That is a lot of cataloging. I hope nobody ever catalogs my stuff that way.
Tonight, the temperatures have dropped below freezing for the first time since Sunday night. That should slow the flow of water which is causing so much trouble on the western side of the state. Maybe it will even snow again, although I could wait for that until I return from watching my niece dance in the Nutcracker on Saturday. If all goes well there, I should be able to connect with
WiFi from my sister's house, and then she will have faster access to all the fun pictures and videos that everyone else posts on their blogs.
The famous dancer poses with her cousins.
Nutcracker anyone? There are a couple for sale at the boutique if you want one.
Dinner after the show for us, between shows for the dancers.
I spent most of the rest of the weekend setting up a high speed WiFi network for her, including a print server so she can print from anywhere (and send one of the kids for the paper) which also brought the old desktop into the network. We never did get to work on the webcam, so sorry no photo chat yet. Of course, if I set that up, I will need to pry my daughter's fingers from it so I can use it too.
