Random Musings and Nicknacks

As I sit here on the 26th, watching the snow fall out our window, its time to reflect on the Christmas we had!

In some ways it started off rather shaky — we had to call and cancel dinner at Don and Anne’s because we discovered the hard way couldn’t get the car out. Ling and I have also spent the leadup to Christmas very sick (and I still am).

We had planned to go to a church on Christmas Eve, and out for dinner after (our usual tradition), but found ourselves snowbound. So Ling cooked up a wonderful Christmas eve dinner instead with meatballs, tofu, and shrimp, and we ate it while listening to the _Vinyl Cafe_ and Dave’s first attempt at cooking a turkey. [1]

After dinner we used iTunes to rent “Ben Hur” and watched that, cozied up in our warm house. The movie actually holds up very well after all this time although I don’t recognize Charlton Heston as a young man!

After the movie it was time to settle into bed, Tim had instructions not to wake us up before 7:30.

I heard Tim get up at 7:45 (wow, he’s maturing!) and was prepared to give him a hard time when he bounded to our room. But instead of running in and waking us up, he went downstairs and let Punky out back! I began wondering who this new mature adult was, and Ling and I got up.

When we came downstairs, Tim was quietly watching TV waiting for us to wake up on our own schedule. He hadn’t even touched the stockings yet!

We went through all the present openings [2], had some breakfast, and as Tim settled into killing people on the TV, Ling and I spiced up our coffees with some Bailey’s and sat watching the snow fall outside, secure in the knowledge that we had nowhere to go.

The afternoon settled into a typical lazy Christmas day (funny how after all the buildup it slows down almost immediately) with Ling snoozing and reading quietly in the guest room, me watching documentaries quietly in the office, and Tim killing people loudly downstairs.

Ling created an amazing Christmas dinner, considering we had done no shopping and hadn’t planned to be eating at home! We had thrown a “utility grade” turkey in the freezer a month ago for a “just in case”, which we defrosted for our dinner. It turned out to be missing a leg, and was immediately dubbed “butch” after last night’s listening. To this she added scalloped potatoes, jumbalaya rice, snow peas, and cauliflower. After dinner we had a combination short bread cookies, chocolates, and after-eight mints for desert (courtesy of Santa).

After dinner our tradition is to watch one of the movies we got for Christmas, in this case “The Dark Knight”. Unfortunately part way into it I was feeling to sick to enjoy it, and so we settled on a 1/2 hour of TV then all went to bed nice and early.

Today we seem to be back into the same routine (I’m in the office, Ling is in the guest room, and Tim is downstairs, quiet, quiet, and loud respectively) but this time I expect to finish the movie without problems.

All in all a very nice festive season, and our family’s first White Christmas!

[1] Ling and I listened, anyway. Tim was too worked up about Christmas to sit and listen.

[2] Punky gave Ling a Garmin! I think he’s planning to use it to find his own way to 108 mile.

Snowbound! I measured 18 inches

What is the saying about common sense? That the problem is that it isn’t?

On the 24th Ling and I wanted to run out and do some last minute grocery shopping and deposit some cheques in the bank. We knew it was going to be a challenge – our road hasn’t been plowed, so there is a single set of tire ruts in and out, but we had done it not to long ago.
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And as of today, Victoria is the snowiest major city in Canada

At 41 cm, Victoria’s snowpack tops that of Winnipeg (24 cm), Quebec City (26 cm) and even the North Pole (40 cm).

This report was written before the 15 cm that they have had fall overnight, and the additional 15 they are expecting today. Although looking at the back yard here, Richmond is also giving Victoria a run for its money!

This has been a very odd Christmas season. I was reflecting on that as I was checking my trunk yesterday to confirm I had a shovel in there in case I needed to dig myself out (I only had to use it once).

It started in extremely odd fashion when, December 11 I realized I was done all my Christmas shopping, and even the gifts for Krystenne and Tara were in the mail. This turned out to be an absolute blessing when you look at what happened next.
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Truth in advertising
Nikon D80 + 50mm
Exposure: Aperture Priority (-0.7 ev)
Shutter Speed: 1/100
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 50mm
Flash: Off
ISO: 100

At this point it is looking incredibly likely that we will have a White Christmas. I’m not talking about our typical “white Christmas” that we’ve had a couple of times where if you wander into the right part of town you can see some snow — I’m talking about the kind that you put on your boots and wade out to help your neighbour get his car out of the driveway.
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I finished a book this week. Actually, more amazingly, I finished two books this week! _No Country for Old Men_ which took me a mere 3 months to read all 200 pages. That compares well against _Snow Crash_ which took me 2 1/2 years.

The odd thing here is both were superb books. It’s not like it was a chore to read them. (more…)