New Year's X-Mas

We made our Christmas pilgrimage to IL a week late and celebrated New Year's there.

Despite being snowed out the previous weekend, there was zero snow in Lanark for New Year's.

 

Movie Night

The boys had never been to the remodeled Edina Theatre, so we went and saw the new Avatar movie. The upstairs bar is modeled after the Gold Room in The Shining. 

For whatever blockbuster movie is playing, they make up a cocktail menu with movie-themed drinks. They are tasty and fun!

 

Cold = Cuddle Time

You know it's chilly in the house when these two are this close.

 

New Dishwasher

The day after Christmas instead of boxing up everything, we dug into the cause of the damp spot under the dishwasher. 

It was this thing that was leaking intermittently. It was $350 on Amazon for a knock-off part. That, and the $200 we've put into it over the last year meant it was time for a new dishwasher. We found a new one that looks just about the same as the old one, but without a leak.

 

Stay-Home Christmas

Our stay-home Christmas day was mellow with just the four of us.\

The cat got a new toy and a whole pile of tissue paper to rustle and hide in.

We took a stroll down to the south beach of Lake Harriet. No one was swimming.

 

Christmas Decor

As usual, JP made our little house look special for Christmas. The blinds are drawn because it stayed below zero for 4 days straight.

 

Christmas Basket

This was the largest Christmas basket I've ever seen! We nibbled thru it during our stay-home Christmas

 

Christmas Dogs

S loves to pose in his new X-Mas collar.

One of the guys at work had this on his X-Mas sweater.

 

Cookie Sheet Cabinet

The skinny cabinet next to the sink has had a weird divider down the middle that makes made it too narrow to fit anything other than sheets of paper. After nearly three years in the house, we corrected it. Now it fits all the cookie sheets and you can reach in easily. It took over an hour with the Dremel and a hand saw. Much better now.

 

X-Mas Canceled

The snow kept up overnight despite it being -10 °F. 

Then the next day the wind picked up and shut down the roads between us and Nana's for Christmas.

 

Snow & Cold

We got 11" of snow over two days. The beauty of the post-covid world is that it's OK to work from home a day a week. Not that the drive to work is terrible, but it's nice to be able to work at home and watch the snow fall and walk the dog on the lake at lunch.

After the snow it got cold. But not as cold as it was in Nebraska.

 

Winter Wonderland

This week we had a slow moving superstorm move thru. It started with rain on Tuesday and turned to sleet then snow and snow and more snow. The sleet gave all the trees a nice base for the snow to stick to. It snowed a little bit every day and created a winter wonderland. In all we probably got 8 or 9".

 

Holidazzle!

We took advantage of a warmish night and hit Holidazzle downtown Minneapolis in Loring Park. It's a winter festival with all sorts of food trucks, vendors, a beer tent, and live music. The place was packed! Afterwards there was a great fireworks display. 

We took the bus there and back (free tickets!) so we didn't have to deal with traffic and parking. The bus stop by home was lit up and bustling. It was good to see all the restaurants packed at only 5:30.

We were all hungry and dove into the food truck food. We had brats, local beer, three types of pierogis, and GP got mac and cheese egg rolls.

One of the coolest things I've seen was a 12 foot tall Yeti puppet. It had a bunch of ropes setup that kids could pull to animate it. 

To get to the bus stop going home, we had to cross over to the sculpture garden. It is so pretty with the lights & snow! On the way home we hit George and the Dragon (our neighborhood pub) for a warmup before the walk home. 

 

Lightbulb Limiter

I got the big amp repaired and it was time to try it out. The amp has some serious high-voltage circuits in it and I didn't want anything to go wrong and blow up, so I built a "lightbulb limiter". It's a box that puts an incandescent lightbulb in series with an outlet. As long as whatever is plugged in doesn't draw a lot of current, the lightbulb stays dim and there's voltage to the plug. As soon as the current goes up (something went wrong), the bulb lights up, its resistance goes up, and the current is limited.

The high voltage circuit runs at 460 volts DC. It was daunting to be probing around with that sort of voltage present. I kept one hand in my pocket the whole time. Everything checked out and the tubes are now glowing and amplifying music like they should. 100 Watts of tube amp is more than anyone needs in their garage. It's like having a 4,000 horsepower engine in your car.

 

Frozen Over

This year Lake Harriet froze over on 12/4. The night before it was all open water and this morning it was entirely frozen all the way across. Won't be long before we'll be out there ice skating!

Along the shore were the biggest frost flowers I've seen. Apparently they only form during the initial freezing of lakes.

 

Permanent Snow

We are finally to the point that the snow is not going to go away until next year. We had a beautiful day of snow. 

The neighborhood was abuzz with snow blowers and the scraping of shovels. After we got it cleared, it was time for a firepit in the backyard with DK from next door.

 

Smoke Leak

I got the tube amp torn apart and located the trouble: it had sprung a leak and let all the smoke out. It looks like there had been some condensation or something got spilled into it and the high voltage circuit crossed over onto the low-voltage circuit.

 

X-Mas Lights

JP Lives for X-Mas decorating. All throughout the year it's on her mind.

She was able to find some really cool sticks with lights to put in the pots out front.

 

Christmas Tree

Our new Christmas tradition is getting our tree. We walk the dog down to the old church, pick out a tree, and haul it back. This year we had GP meet us with the truck rather than carrying it up the hill.

A few hours later and JP had it all decorated and lit.

Illinois Thanksgiving

We hit Nana's house for Thanksgiving. It's such a nice drive now that we don't have to take I-80 the whole way.