Bravo UPS

Neither rain nor snow . . . Nor impassable streets shall keep the men in brown from their appointed rounds.

Even if it means leaving the truck a few blocks away.

These guys, on the other hand, weren't so smart:

Where's the feuer?

One of these days I'm going to ask my neighbor why he has a German firetruck.

Random shots

Plate seen in Berkeley. Of course.

My favorite cat, Sam. With her beloved catnip cherry.

And then, the sun

The lovely thing about Denver is that while we occasionally get a little snow, the sun always comes out again quickly. People who have lived here a long time will complain, in fact, if it is overcast more than two days in a row.

We are very spoiled.

And of course, there's the entertainment factor of getting to ski to work.

Deep thoughts

And yet more snow

OK, the Top of the Hyatt does good mojitos. I should have taken photos of the snow flying sideways past the windows. Or the post-apocalyptic city streets. But it wasn't that bad for walking.

It was good to have a little Cuban courage for the drive home to this:

I left the car in the Safeway parking lot a block away, after doing an entertaining drive-by of my alley. There's been zero plowing of side streets, so I almost got stuck. But the Roo came through. Guess I should go out and shovel now. I'd rather laze around in the morning.

And snow ... and snow ...

Yep, still a pretty view from the office balcony.

Hello, Florida person. Welcome to Colorado!

Sophie thinks the snow's just fine, though her muppet feet tend to ice up. Note the increase in accumulation from the photo below. That's about a four-hour difference.

Let it snow

They did say last night that it would likely snow today. The panic-mongers of Channel 7 are predicting "up to 20 inches!" but as cow-orker Matt says, they're using the Violent Femmes meteorological method – they're adding up (get it?) the predicted totals for the next three days and then rounding up.

Still, it's coming down pretty hard. (Click the picture to see it bigger ... you can see the flakes better.) The grass is still visible, so not much accumulation yet, but we'll see what it's like tomorrow around this time.

Meanwhile, Sophie has gone back to bed.

Ha ha ha, hee hee hee

In the 6th grade, this was my Secret Santa present from David Franzen. No, I have not been hauling it around with me all these years. I ran across it in the basement of my parents' house a couple of years ago and reclaimed it for my work glass.

It's fun! It holds a lot of ice! And a whole can of Coke!

So wherever you are, David, thanks again and Merry Christmas!

Say cheese!

Oh boy oh boy. Somebody knows what I like. Direct from Cowgirl Creamery, the oh-so-creamy Mt. Tam, the pleasingly piquant Point Reyes Blue, and the smooth and suave St. George.

The St. George package looks rumpled in the photo because I've already eaten a chunk of it. Most delicious!

Stamp out Christmas ...

... with kid-face rubber stamps!

These three youngsters are going to be thrilled by their uncle's creative gift of custom stamps from RubberStamps.net. You can have a stamp made out of any black-and-white image. You just get it the right size and upload it as a jpeg or gif. Reportedly these portraits took a bit of Photoshop manipulation before they looked good in black and white.

Ace? Boffo?

Heard on the BBC just now: "The U.S. dollar, also known as a buck, a clam, a bean – as in 'bean counter' – an ace, a boffo."

A boffo?

Can't leech wireless tonight.

Sophie's in the seat.

City sparkle

Sophie has a new toy

Finally got the phone videos to work with YouTube. For some reason I couldn't get sound before. I probably won't put a lot of videos up, but it's nice to know I have the capability.

When I play this video, Sophie cries because she can hear the toy squeaking, yet there is no toy hidden behind the laptop that she can see.