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It’s not warm and sunny here. It’s overcast and cold. And I think there’s some more snow on the way.

Have you put a Christmas tree up yet? We decorated ours last night.

Oh, and what are you doing in the way of meat this year?

Our tradition is Pigfest. Christmas Day the Boss makes many types of horse do-overs and I do deep knee bends to prepare for the mighty task of consuming same.

Oh, and here in central Colorado, the wind is blowing about 35 mph (that’s 3,798 kilomanjaros, in euro-blab), and the temp is a brisk 15 degrees farenheit (or -1274 cassius). In the distance, across the frozen tundra, I can see mastodons slowly (but majestically) keeling over into the snow.

And wind chill? Quien sabe? Neither of is is brave enough to go outside to see how fast our blood freezes in our veins. I’m both heavily insured and spiteful, so I ain’t goin’ out there. And the Boss is only slightly insured, making it hardly worth the effort to try selling her on the idea.

The bad news from R.I: The retard snow driving rodeo
is in full force.

The good news from R.I: No snow tax, yet.

Only about 6 inches here on Cape Cod, but it’s the heavy beautiful kind of snow. Been snowing all day, but no additional accumulation. Put up the fake (silver, retro) tree, and making cookies, so starting to feel a little Christmassy around here – finally!

We drove a stupid long way to buy a turkey breast roll and a small ham to go with today (very good butcher, bugt it doesn’t hurt that our favorite chish ‘n’ fips shop is in that town). We put up the tree yesterday, but we’re not decorating it until tonight. Um, now. Poor Charlotte has never seen a Christmas tree before (I spent all my Christmases in Britain), so I thought it best to give her overnight to get used to the daft idea of bringing shrubs in the house.

We’re decorating the tree tonight as well. Some Christmas music and some “spirit” of the season should put me in the mood.

This will be the 6th year in a row for our new tradition of “bowling for Jesus” on Christmas day. No one has to cook or clean up their house. Everyone brings one gift and we bowl for them. High score gets first pick. Works out well for everyone.

Well, that’s the tree all glisteny and glowing. And Charlotte? Not a sign of the little brute – I swear she sleeps 22 out of 24 hours.

Sorry about your weather, Gibby though, t’be honest, I find the warmth dahn sarf a bit much this year – on a par with temperatures in Greece and Italy, they said on the news last night. Not very festive at all, if you ask me.

Still, this is England. It’ll be different in, oh, half an hour, or so.

It’s 70 degrees here, at 1800 CST – I just looked. Got up to around 75 today, but overcast. Cooler weather is forecast for Sunday eve, Monday, and on. Gonna get down to maybe 40 Monday night.

Brrrrrr…

Will there be a photo of the Tree at Badger Manor?

25 degrees and six inches of snow. In Portland, OR. Turning to ice storm overnight. Wee! Been snowing here the past week. Freezing cold. Icy roads. Stupid drivers. Broken water pipes. It doesn’t do this here, dammmit!.

I swear, we’ll all be living in gotdamn igloos and the global warming people will still be spouting their crap. I just wanna smack em’.

Your wish is my etcetera, McGoo:

I really vandalized Uncle B’s image shrinking it down for the web.

Love it, Stoaty! Happy holidays!

It looks better in the flesh … umm.. needles – honest!

Merry Christmas, fellow minions!|

Wow! That’s a pretty tree. Merry Christmas, y’all.

Merry Christmas to all.

I once dated a guy (dead ringer for Dean Cain) who did all of his Christmas shopping at 7-11 in the wee hours of Christmas morning.

You were in luck if you liked beef jerky or scratch off lotto tickets.

We’ve had our fake tree up for two and a half weeks now. It would be nice to find a fake one that looks like a real one.
No snow yet and it is a windy 17 degrees.

Nice tree!

It looks better in person. Though our trees always look like they were decorated by a pair of eight-year-olds, because…pass.

Charlotte’s loving it, anyhow. She hasn’t knocked it over, but she’s figured out how to shake the ornament with the chimes.

Never let a cat near tinsel. Our manx always ate the tinsel and redecorated with it around the house later. Rather horrible seeing a cat “scooting” around trying to free the glittery string.

Ohhhh…don’t I know that lesson! My cat Andrew was a foreign-object-eater, big time. One year, he trailed festive holiday tinsel out his anus for a week. I tried tugging on it once, but he squeeked and looked horribly affronted, so we just had to wait for it to…work out on its own.

Whenever he walked into the room, I dissolved in puddles of laughter. Which clearly offended the living hell out of him, but what’re you going to do?

Heh! You get the same effect with the string from the roast beef carelessly discarded where a scavenging dog can retrieve it!

Not so glittery, though….

Baloney edges! Gads, the dog got into that once. And it clearly *hurt* during the…processing.

Christmas spirit has (finally!) arrived here in the Lokki house in Dallas. Temperature plummeted from 70 yesterday morning to a current crispy 25 degrees F. That’s below zero for ya’all who’s been centigradally-indoctinated. We’re spending the day in the kitchen making Christmas cookies and drinking wine, et al. It’s been fun watching the little fountain in our garden gradually freeze over… We DID have lots of fluffy-chickadee-downed birds at the feeder this morning, until the Cooper’s Hawk showed up. He hasn’t gotten his breakfast yet (or at least we haven’t seen the feathers). He’s invisible at the moment, but we know he’s still around because nobody else (even the squirrel!)is around.

Mrs. Lokki wanted to bribe him him off part of the chicken I bought yesterday to roast for a warm Sunday dinner, but I veto’d that idea.

Anyhow, back to the warm kitchen and my secret recipe Mexican Wedding Cookies…

That sounds almost like what we used to call a Blue Norther, Lokki. A temperature change of about 50 degrees or more in about two hours or less. I loved ’em when I lived in D.

My mama was from Dallas. Hackberry, actually, but Dallas ate Hackberry sometime between then and now. She was drum majorette at Carrollton High.

Rhode Island is subject to those huge temperature swings sometimes. I like weather, so I always enjoyed ’em.

Still sunny and very mild here (40s and 50s). Still, booze and food go a LONG way toward imparting the Christmas spirit.

Small world. The last address I lived at in Dallas was in Carrollton – just north of W’s turnpike in the Greenbelt Park area.

…and I loved Blue Northers, or any other violent or abrupt display of Nature.

I just took the dog for a walk in the teeth of a freezing cold* wind, and she has the nerve to bark at me demanding her dinner. IT’S NOT DINNERTIME YET, BITCH. MY HANDS AND LIPS ARE CRACKED AND RAW AND BLEEDING BECAUSE YOUR ASS WANTED A WALK. HOW ABOUT A LITTLE GRATITUDE??

*”freezing cold” is on the Peel scale. I think it’s like 40 or so.

Meh. Can’t find an embeddable version. So, click to see Dog Malfunction — Fixed if you haven’t already.

This one’s for you, Mrs P.

Merry Christmas everybody!

(I used to have a boyfriend from Carrollton.)

North Texans represent! Allen, TX here (former Baltimoron)

Merry Christmas Mustelidae and Minions.

Despite my nick name (Gibby Haynes is from Dallas), I’ve never been to Texas. I aim to remedy that before I buy the farm.

Oh, you should! Texas is my favourite place in the US so far – though given that the other places visited have been New York, Florida, California and Oklahoma, maybe that’s not saying much… 🙂

Compliments of the season to all.

While Texas is on the topic, my mom’s folks have lived in Garland my whole life. Her sister lives in Arlington (formerly Mesquite) and her brother lives in Dallas. We used to go to Texas every Christmas – being the only grandkid for 4 years, I got loaded up on loot.

Was always fun to not have to wear a coat and hats and mittens to step outside on Christmas day. 🙂 It’s like 0 degree F windchill here today in Kansas City. But hey, that’s up from the -20F windchill of yesterday!

Cinnamon Christmas Ornaments:

4 cups cinnamon
3 cups apple sauce
1/2 cup white glue

Mix it up and let it sit a while.

Roll or flatten to a bit thinner than 1/2 inch and shape with cookie cutters or by hand, don’t forget to cut the hole out (I use a straw).

Air dry for a few days, turning occasionally – or low heat in the oven (150) for a few hours, turning occasionally.

Add glitters and googly eyeballs if needed.

Those sound delicious Sarah, though I prefer paste based recipes as a rule.

We are varying anywhere from -14F to -5F with the wind chill.

No snow to speak of, just bone-chilling cold and high winds.

Last night, I kept listening to the transformers at the electricity sub-station kicking back on after some particularly fierce gusting winds.

As the crow flies, the sub-station is about 500 yards away, and I can see it from my bedroom windows. The wind would howl, things would go dark outside in a random pattern, and then a few seconds later, the ozone-y HUMMMM as things tried to cycle back to normal.

It’s supposed to be in the 50’s on Christmas Eve.
As least I won’t freeze my tuchas off as I light the luminaria.

White glue is quite heady when spiced and served with a nice mulled chianti. Some prefer Titebond (white, tan, or Colombian brown) – but I am a classic Elmer’s man.

I just went and got gas for the genny – just in case. It’s supposed to dump freezing rain on us tonight. That often kills the power around here, I’m told.

I suppose you could use model glue instead, so you get a nice cinnamon spiced high while opening gifts.

Speaking of generators, I picked up a portable DeWalt 10kW a couple of years ago to backup the LP-powered Generac (also 10kW) that always managed to develop wontstartitis at the worst possible times (like wind 30+ mph, temp 0 and falling, cloud cover all week, ground blizzards–ideal conditions to troubleshoot an intermittent electrical problem in complete comfort).

The DeWalt starts first time every time, runs six hours on a tank of gas, and is much less noisy than the Generac (not that the Generace can be heard over the howling wind).

The Queen will frown on this lack of posting!

That’s not frowning, that’s loose dentures.

Wow – it IS a small world – Hackberry and Carrolton. I’m in Valley Ranch which is a penny’s throw from Hackberry and and stone’s throw from Carrolton. And yes, Steamboat it’s a blue Norther. Our saying here in Dallas is: When the wind blows from Mexico, the weather gets hot; when the wind blows down from Canada, the weather gets cold, and when the wind blows from both directions we get thunderstorms and tornado’s.

Gibby – you really do need to visit Texas – start with Austin, the live music capital of the world, and then Fredricksburg – http://www.fredericksburgtexas.com/ – and finally a trip to Shiner! http://www.shiner.com/main.php?page=history