White Christmas (sort of)

I hope everyone had a good Christmas holiday. I'm back at work, sort of. I have stuff to get done, but I'm planning on this being a light duty week before I hit the ground at full tilt next week. I proved to myself over the holiday that I'm not addicted to the Internet. I checked my e-mail on my parents' computer Thursday morning but otherwise haven't been online until this morning, and I never even took my laptop out of its bag.

The big news in this part of the world was that this area had its first white Christmas in about 80 years, with it snowing most of the day on Christmas Eve and the snow still on the ground for Christmas day.

However, I still have experienced only one white Christmas in my life, and this wasn't it because the storm fell apart before it made it a hundred miles farther east to where my parents live. My house got the white Christmas while I was gone.

We did get enough snow on Christmas Eve afternoon to get pretty swirling flakes blowing around (you may have to squint to see the snow in this picture), but it didn't stick since it was still above freezing.



The snow was pretty much gone by the time I got home, except for one patch to the side of my house. I took this picture right after I got home on Saturday, but it's still there (although a bit smaller). It's an area that doesn't get much sun, and I imagine that the drifts against the wall were pretty deep. That's the part of the yard I can see from my office window, so I can sit at my desk and see the snow. It's also what I can see through the slats of my patio fence from my kitchen window, so if the only window I look out is that one, it looks like the ground is covered in snow. We're supposed to get more snow tomorrow.




The one white Christmas I've ever had was when we lived in Oklahoma and it started snowing on Christmas Eve morning, and the snow was still around on Christmas. In Germany, we generally had snow most of the time between Thanksgiving and Easter, but it always melted a few days before Christmas and then didn't snow again until after Christmas, so we never actually had snow on Christmas. Oddly, while this was the first Christmas snowfall in the Dallas area since the 1920s, we've had several Easter snows in the past decade. I've had more white Easters than white Christmases (no real accumulation at Easter, but we have had flurries).

Other than the excitement of watching the Dallas news bulletins about the approaching snowstorm, it was a quiet Christmas. I got lots of warm, fuzzy stuff, including a proper "work" bathrobe that's gray and fuzzy and dignified and makes me look like a cast member in Doctor Zhivago, so I don't have to work in the fuzzy pink bathrobe. Plus, I got a stand for my electronic keyboard so I can make it act like a piano and maybe learn to really play it (true piano practice is a challenge when you're propping the keyboard up on a chair).