Merry mountains!

What better day to hit the slopes? Easy drive, no traffic, everyone's happy. Moonbeam's Mom and I had a blast. We had to leave early (I had to get back to town for another holiday dinner), but that was good: We're now inspired to get out and ski more, more, more! (Sometimes it's just so hard to get out of bed early for it. But then I'm glad I did.)

Merry Christmas!

A lovely Christmas tree shone upon the stockings hung with care, and upon the most delicious feast of roast beast and bûche de noël.

Happy holidays to one and all!

Hot slaw on a cold day

Hot Indian slaw from Once Upon a Feast, which I found through Kalyn's Kitchen, which I found through all the bloggers taking part in Menu for Hope, which raised money (more than $58,000!) for the World Food Program.

This slaw is pretty tasty. The first batch came out too salty for me, so I made another batch without salt and mixed them together. (I use so little salt in my cooking now that I really notice it.) I used a couple Thai bird chiles, since that's what I had handy. I'm taking it to a potluck Christmas Day after skiing, so I wanted something I could make ahead and serve cold or at room temp.

This my first attempt at fancy close-up food photography. I can see why there's a need for food stylists. It's tricky!

Oh, and guess what? It's snowing again.

No trucks, no produce

An experiment in HTML table-building in Blogger:

Safeway's good for parking during a snowstorm. Not so good for shopping after. The produce manager was unhappy. Apparently a lot of people have been upset at not being able to get Everything They Need Right This Minute.

I was just happy to get something I could fix and take to Christmas dinner. And also milk and eggs. (They were out of pretty much all dairy two days ago.)

Not crumb-y

One thing I love about the Macbook: the integrated keyboard. I feel much less guilty eating cheese and crackers while computing.

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!