Denver got clobbered with snow a couple of days ago. Salt Lake and the surrounding area got snow. Meanwhile, Pocatello was high and definitely not white. All that changed overnight last night. When I got up this morning we had a little more than three inches of snow on the ground. More is forecast for Saturday night. It’ll stay cold for the forseeable future, so we’re assured of a white Christmas. Everything around Christmas just looks better in the snow!
Our neighbor boys came over this afternoon and asked if they could shovel the driveway and front walk. Nina agreed and over they came. They worked and worked. I’m sure they discovered that the job was much bigger than they thought it was in the beginning. They did earn some Christmas cash, however. I thought they did a great job. But, will they want to do it again?
A few inches of snow is just right. However, our very good friends in Colorado Springs are definitely bemoaning the blizzard that literally shut the state down. The Denver Airport was closed for almost three days until they could move enough snow out of the way to open up a couple of runways and taxiways and get the deicing equipment working this morning. Our friends had booked a Christmas Cruise. They were to fly out yesterday. We came very close to booking the same cruise to go with them, but in the end decided that our cruise next June will be expensive enough that we needed to save the money for that. The decision turned out to be a good one. Our friends will miss the cruise. There is no way for them to get to Florida in time to catch the boat. When we book cruises many months in advance we always buy cruise insurance, “just in case”. They do the same. This time the insurance will pay off for them. What a bummer, however, to be snowed in rather than cruising the Caribbean Ocean!
Tomorrow is the beginning of a four-day weekend. I’ll go back to work on Wednesday for the rest of next week. The company I work for generates a significant part of the quarterly revenue in the last two weeks of every quarter (which makes the difference between a profit and a loss). That means the last two weeks of December are crucial business weeks and computer systems or network problems during this time period can be disasterous. At the end of September a super typhoon blew into the Philippines, right over our facility in Calamba. Through heroic efforts by the staff in Calamba, the computers and networks stayed up long enough to get the necessary parts shipped to meet the revenue targets. Hopefully this coming week will be calm and quiet in that part of the world.
We are planning a very quiet Christmas here. We’ll go to Soda Springs tomorrow to spend the afternoon with mom and dad. They’re beginning to feel better (dad much better than mom). Sunday, which is Christmas Eve, I’ll be singing in the choir in Church in the morning (I even have a solo part to sing) while Nina is up at the prison. Then that afternoon the Kinport Branch (that’s the branch of the church that serves the prison where Nina is the Relief Society President) is having their Christmas program so I’ll go up the prison with Nina for that event. The inmate choir is performing and they’re always a listening pleasure. They REALLY get into the music. Monday is Christmas Day and we’ll stay home. I also have Tuesday off but we haven’t decided what, if anything, we’ll do on Tuesday. There are lots of options and staying home is right now one of the more desireable choices.
So, we’re having a White Christmas in Pocatello, Idaho. Merry Christmas everyone!