Collateral damage in a field of white

We picked up better than a foot of snow on Friday, the bulk of it coming in just a few hours. I worked from home and learned via email that the office was closed by mid-afternoon. The snow was light and the snowblower moved it away easily until the end. We cover the snowblower with a tarp during the off-hours. When it's time to start the cleanup, I remove the tarp and set it aside on top of the snow on the lawn. As I was returning the snowblower to its place, my glasses were covered with snow and, well, the snowblower inhaled the tarp, thick blue plastic wrapped around the auger. Yesterday morning, I spent nearly an hour cutting away the tarp, leaving a ground cover of blue confetti.

A couple of weeks ago, my father was getting his Jeep ready for the season. It started, but sounded a bit rough. He removed the air filter and found that it was filled with acorns.

Can you hear me now? Woof.

Gmail, Google's mail service, has a new feature called Web Clips. It presents links to news stories and, occasionally, advertisements. Gmail has a very good junk mail filter and puts all suspected junk mail into a Spam folder. When I go to clean out that folder, I also get a link for Spam recipes, such as Gingered Spam Salad.

The pace of work is picking up. We have a major project due on the 30th, with a contract payment contingent on product delivery. People have been even-tempered, a nice turn. I have had a couple of engineers provide helpful reviews of the documents I'm writing. In turn, I have a few cycle to help another team. I'll go White Plains for a couple of days to determine how best I can help with the other project.

We've started planning our family Christmas dinner. We'd originally counted 34 people, but several won't be able to join us. We have our menu planned. We're fortunate that Christmas comes on a Sunday, giving us an extra day for preparation. But, we're most fortunate that we have a family that wants to join us for the holiday. We have many blessings.