Grey Christmas

White Christmas, bah humbug .... this is the view from my window today.

In Wisconsin, we're having a grey, slushy Christmas, with rain on top of about a foot of snow. The big winter storm is dumping tons of snow on Minneapolis & the Dakotas, but it's mostly north and west of us here in WI & IL, where we've been getting ice and rain and wintry mix. The National Weather Service called it a "complex" storm system; the best description we've heard so far was a reporter on NPR yesterday, who called it a "variety pack of nasty weather".

We heard that NPR reporter when we were on the exit ramp from the Beltline around 5:00 p.m. yesterday, about 10 minutes from home. Even though I stressed and worried, the travel back from Chicago turned out just as Mark (the optimist in the family) predicted - we missed the worst of it, and were driving in just plain rain, not ice. When we got to the train station in Harvard, the car was sheathed in ice, but it was so warm - 36 or 37 degrees - that the ice just slid off the car. The car was stuck in its parking spot, but because there were 3 of us, I drove and mark & Ethan pushed, and we got out pretty shortly. One of the tires was low, but 2 gas stations and 5 quarters later, we were on the road.

And we are having a perfectly nice little Christmas - waffles cooked on Mark's new waffle iron that I gave him for breakfast, with bacon & fried apples. Beef tenderloin, roasted potatoes, and trifle for dinner. And Lora Brody's ruggelach for snacks. I'll add more pix after dinner.