A Christmas Story

I know it is a little late, but I thought 'the family' might like to see some photos from our Christmas. Weather was a factor, more than usual, this year. TOPWLH and I four wheel drive'd it to Grand Haven on the 23rd, between two storms. So we woke up in the Friedgen house on Christmas Eve morning. The girl COTU, who loves silky pajamas, was reading. Mary, Bloody Mary was the book she was engrossed in that day. Historical fiction. Her favorite genre.

Later that day we opened some gifts. This one was a list that OSLO and the SLO's had put together of all the reasons that they appreciated their father/grandfather this year. Nicely laminated, on Christmas paper. Very thoughtful, and much appreciated. A nicely framed photograph of grandfather, daughter and grandchildren came with it. His gene pool.

OSLO really liked the scarf, gloves, hat, sweaters and pajamas chosen for her by her children. I must say that they have excellent taste. I have, among other things, a new soup pot. Exactly what I wanted. Happy New Year to you all.

Season's Greetings

The Centers of the Universe were quite excited to have their grandparents spend a couple of days (and nights) with them. Roads have been treacherous along the lakeshore for about a week, and having the COTU travel back and forth to Grandma's house seemed ill advised.

The official snowfall for DECEMBER in Muskegon is 64.4 inches thus far. There has been 50.3 inches so far in Grand Rapids. Holland snowfall is probably closer to Muskegon than Grand Rapids, but either is a lot. Something around 20 is normal for both places.

Back to Back to Back

A pretty nasty storm blew threw here Thursday night through about 1 pm on Friday, depositing about 10 inches of snow in our driveway over the course of about 10 hours. It made for some white knuckle driving into the airport on Friday night to pick up TOPWLH, who miraculously found the only available window of opportunity and arrived less than two hours late.

The roads were too bad to risk having the gene pool out on them, but TOPWLH and I ventured north in our four wheel drive truck and visited them briefly yesterday, before the second round of snow and wind and drifting began late Saturday.

So far another ten inches of snow has fallen today, but the big deal is the wind. A 61 mph wind gust was reported at Spyglass this morning. The 'system snow' has been replaced by 'lake effect' which is likely to continue until the next storm arrives, currently predicted for late Tuesday afternoon.

There's not much to do but hunker down and wait it out. I apologize to my Minnesota readers who are dealing with their own version of the same thing, but I needed to vent. There is some talk that this may be the gloomiest month on record, with about 4% of available sunshine so far. So happy first official day of winter, family and friends.

John and Julian

About 9 guys -- all pretty much engineering types -- had dinner together at Portofino's recently. The food was excellent, I hear. For those of you not familiar with Portofino's, it is near the ferry building, seen here. Since central heating is not the norm, several of them wore jackets. Coolish for June -- er -- December.

Vermin

The only good thing about temperatures in the teens is that there are no warming shacks for squirrels. Our temperatures fell from the upper 40's last night to about 15 or so by mid morning. The resulting 'flash freeze' made for some tricky driving today, but it looks like the Minnesota blizzard missed us. Just some lake effect today. More snow is on tap for Tuesday night. It is shaping up to be a tough winter.

Yule

The tree is up, with some -- actually, a lot of help from the gene pool. Complaints were made about how skinny the tree is. I tried to downsize even further a few years ago, to a table top tree, but somehow I got outvoted. That seems to happen a lot.

Final Final

I gave my last final exam today. This is the room where I have spent 3 hours every Tuesday and Thursday morning since late August. From 8:00 until 11:00, give or take a few minutes. The last student finished up a bit before 5:00 this afternoon. After all those hours, I would have thought that I would have noticed that door in the back corner of the classroom before this. I wonder where it goes? It is in the science building, as evidenced by the periodic chart hanging on the back wall. I wonder if I'll miss it?

Some Snow

There was enough wind yesterday to blow away the snow that fell at the top of the bluff.

It piled up a bit more in the sheltered areas. No more storms forecast until Tuesday.

Basement View

Winter has settled in, with an unrelenting dumping of snow. The current winter storm warning goes through late tonight, with a lake effect snow warning continuing after that. The down side of life in the lee of a big lake. One report stated that we've had 14.5 inches of snow since Friday morning. I don't think it's been that much here, but our driveway was plowed out overnight, and it has completely filled in again.I found the headphones to my CD player/radio, and managed to keep myself motivated for a while on the treadmill this morning. I can't complain about the view, but it takes a while to adjust to a different form of exercise. I notice the difference a little exercise makes, though.

As mentioned elsewhere, the season is truly finis.