NOTE: I believe I'd have to ask Dave to change the name of the thread; so I won't bother, but please note this thread will also include Spring 2023. Unless traffic picks up a lot, a change every 6 months makes more sense than every 3.
==

Time for a new thread.
Happy Winter Solstice! ❄️ 🌚 ☀️
Often referred to as the day of the "sun's rebirth" winter solstice celebrations honour the symbolism of fire and light, along with life, death, the rising sun, and the moon. Celebrate the changing seasons and the natural world. 🕯️ 🔥 🌎

From now on the days will be getting longer.
If you'd like to look back at where we've been, please visit: The thread "Support for a Healthy Lifestyle in Autumn 2022" in Sandbox forum

Thank you, Ann, I am most happy to know that the days will be getting longer.

It is super cold this week, today -31C/-23F, high will be -26C/-15F, at least we will get some sun and no snow, we have lots.

We are thankful that we didn't plan to go to Vancouver for Christmas! The weather is causing a real mess in Vancouver. My daughter posted on FB yesterday that she enjoyed driving in the snow and would help her friends get around if necessary.

My son lives in Surrey, it's been a real mess there.

Well, you get an area which gets more snow and cold temps than they are used to, and in which the majority of cars are not properly prepared for REAL winter driving and the drivers who don't really know how to drive in winter and the area doesn't have sufficient equipment to really deal with the snow and it equals a real mess. My daughter lives near the top of a hill in East Van and when they really get snow there, some of the nearby streets just become sledding hills until the snow melts. My daughter has a September birthday. She learned to drive in snow before she ever took her test and they go to Whistler regularly; so they've got proper winter tires on the car. My other daughter has an April birthday and passed her test in October w/o ever having driven in snow. We had a freak early snow at the end of October that year and I took her out on the back roads of the National Research Council and let her experience winter driving to the point that she got the car (safely) off road and it needed to be winched back on. Probably the best driving lesson she ever had.

A pricey, inconvenieint driving lesson but good experience!!

Plus- people aren't mentally prepared to really believe the weather will hit them and to prepare at all-- heck, we get it plenty enough around here that everyone should know how to prepare but its the same story every time- milk, bread, TP.. And great majority of storms here are handled well enough that you get out safely in a day or two by which time the store is restocked already.

Margaret, hope you're feeling better, I think you said you had some yuck.. wow I feel toasty compared to those temps!!

Well, the weather reports are full of doom and gloom up here. A couple of big storms tracking this way. Will they hit us or go around us? Nobody knows for sure. They are talking about significant precipitation, high winds and very mild temps followed by a flash freeze. Oh Joy! We are being told to charge all our devices. Dunno. It will hit us or it won't. I could live without all the advance hype.


Was this site down for awhile? I couldn't get into it last night or earlier this morning.

ive had funny internet too. not sure just this or..
i wonder if it is system overload with last minute xmas activity..

I heard over on Cubits that this site was super slow last night.

Happy Solstice, Merry Christmas, and Happy Hanukkah!

The site was down for several hours, thanks to Dave it is back to normal.

The site Gremlins must have known that we had a new thread for the new season!

We finally got our tree finished. I'll add a picture later from my phone as the one I could grab from FB will be awfully small here. We celebrated with Christmas dinner last night before going to a church service - the first one in person on Christmas eve since 2019. We scheduled it for last night as it was best for our grandson, but in the end he couldn't make it as he'd been in a family gathering with his father's family on the 23rd and yesterday his uncle tested positive for Covid.

So it will be a quiet Christmas as I sit here in my pjs working/playing on the computer and listening to the annual broadcast of a complete Messiah.

The weather has been dismal and we are grateful that we hadn't planned to travel this season. Roads closed all over, airplanes grounded and even trains stuck on the tracks for hours.

But we finished out Christmas picture letter, finished all the baking I was planning and even ventured out to the mall on Friday afternoon. It was raining when we left, snowing when we returned. But it was fairly quiet and I found a new puffy jacket 50%. It fits and it's not dark brown, grey navy blue or black, but rather a light orange. (I think all dark winter coats sold in Canada should be required to have a reflective strip on them somewhere as you see so many people walking in the dark and often on the wrong side of the road).

Anyway, I wish you all a blessed day. Seasons Greetings and Best Wishes for 2023. Please enjoy this Jacquie Lawson greeting card:
http://jlcards.com/L7Rm39

And if you wish to see what we've done in this past year, you'll find our picture-greeting at:
https://violaann.smugmug.com/O...

Merry Christmas & a healthy, happy 2023!

Great idea to require reflective stripes on dark coats!

Happy nebulous time between Xmas and NY!
Library was fairly busy with families getting out and kids off school. After the cold snap, we are climbing back to normal temps (even above by next week ) and had no frozen precip to deal with.
When we went to NYC one December, I noticed 95% of people wearing a black or very dark puffy jacket. At least they were all on the sidewalk and subway where everyone is looking out for pedestrians and there are always a number of them. Another time I was driving to daughters in Baltimore- someone crossing the street alone, poorly lit area, not a crosswalk, entirely in dark IN the dark, so foolish and dangerous. Uggghhh. ... One of my husband's 'hang ups' is that people walk alongside traffic and assume that white line for the shoulder is a force field that magically makes sure no car ever crossses or strays and hits them. Wheh we walk, he's got traffic in mind.

Anyhoo, I have a nice white Amaryllis opening buds on its third stalk, taking that to work today. Bringing home a small three-base ponytail palm that's struggling- was clearance, found mealies later, got weird looking leaves and gettting soft. It was a $5 save so no big deal. If it gets healthy it would be a perfect plant for the dry workplace. A few plants will get a treatment of Bayer imadicloprid, those mealies..

I have an alarm on my phone, and it announces the name of the alarm. Instead of having it say 'Work at 7:15" I changed the alarm name to Be amazing. So its time for me to go be amazing actually I'm not amazing till 8:45 an clocked in, this is the lazy get ready time. Hope all have a good day.

I like the "Be Amazing!" alarm. I don't often need to set an alarm, so when I do I go with a music alarm from Alexa, usually John Philip Sousa! That usually produces the Washington Post March.

We don't use alarms, we always wake up early, if I sleep past 7:30 DH comes and checks to see if I died.

ooh, Margaret

A Sousa march, no thanks! I used to be able to sleep through loud alarms. Now I prefer something gentler especially if it gradually gets louder- that works well for me. One phone had a screen that gradually brightened as well.

We have a customer who's a super weather freak, for lack of a better term. When she can't come download weather maps, she asks us to describe IN DETAIL any fronts and precip across US. Last year there many calls for info from a site displaying snow measurements. Phew, lots of detail. Today I finally printed us a desk copy of a map with all the states, great lakes, and I penciled in the CA provinces that border US too. Geography lesson. I saw Kamloops!

I like to check the weather but sure not that freaky.

Sally, we are about 56 miles SW of Kamloops, in the high country, gets a lot colder, more snow, and windy dry hot summers.

I've got one friend who has at least THREE weather apps on her phone!

Got back to the pool this morning, but it's been snowing all day; so I didn't go out again.

Yesterday we went to a special exhibit of the art from the Sistine Chapel. https://chapelsistine.com/ It's a traveling exhibit; so you may find it near you and it was very interesting.

Tomorrow I'll get out for some groceries and I need to get some orchid potting medium and try to salvage an ailing orchid.

I keep track of the weather in eight places of importance to me.

In Palm Springs right now, walking a lot, probably eating too much but not total gluttony.