Okay. Drove in a snowstorm for the first time ever. Not dead. That's good.

Holy crap, msbelle. What are you feeding that boy? Miracle Grow?

I essentially stayed up all night last night from 11:30 p.m. and most of the day today. Kids got up at 7:00 a.m. and I ran for breakfast and coffee. Then the firewood delivery came and I paid the guys. Then showered and left for Christmas and grocery shopping. Until 4 p.m.

By 5:30, I needed a major nap so I slept until 8:00. I need to get a better sleep schedule.

Congratulations, Dana! Pretty soon you'll be driving a dogsled team through the wilderness!

I just got back from a lovely party (complete with Buffistas) where I ate too much and now I am crashed on the couch with my laptop and a glass of scotch. I do love being on vacation.

Bleh. I made four dozen raspberry thumbprint cookies (one dozen without mini-chocolate chips, the rest with), and they came out well.

But then, my usual chocolate chip cookies came out flat and crispy instead of thick and chewy. Too much butter, I think.

I have a box of crappy cookie mix I have in the oven now, which I can't bear to gift. Then, I ran out of flour so I can't make oatmeal cookies tonight. BLEH. I really wanted to get all the baking done tonight.

KR, I'm a butter-flavor Crisco convert for chocolate chip cookies. Very chewy.

I bought more flour, sugar and butter and need to make up gingerbread dough so we can do gingerbread men tomorrow.

The outside world is covered in snow.

Like, the most snow I've seen in Seattle since 1996.

Despite the annoying and budget-sucking hole that is carrying a mortgage on two houses, I am right now so glad we moved. At least if we're totally snowed in, we've got a major grocery store within half a mile of our house here.

Our old house? The alley leading up to where we parked emptied out on one of Seattle's steeper streets, the kind that have the Road Closed signs ready and waiting from the first dropped leaf of fall. And no grocery stores that we could get to without going up or down said street for about two miles.

I am really glad you've moved as well. I cannot imagine being near your old hill right now as anything other than a suicide attempt.

Plus the market near you is nifty.

I praise my personal Craigslisting all of the time that I moved where I did. It's an insane snowpocalypse, but I am across the street from Trader Joe's. All hail the trader.

One of the requirements of where I live is that it has to be Walking Distance from useful places. You can imagine how thrilled I was to find a house I could afford in the city where I wanted to live.

It appears that Snowpocalypse II: Electric Boogaloo has been cancelled here. We've got light snow and wind, but the whole Freezing Rain On Top Of The Eight Inches From Yesterday isn't going to happen, so as far as I'm concerned we've dodged a bullet.

It's cold out. -5 F, with a wind chill of -20 to -30. That's cold by Wisconsin or Minnesota standards even.

But still, I want to go out for steak and eggs....

Oh, happy Winter Solstice, for us Northern Hemisphere types. It happened at 4:04 AM board time.