Mannheim Steamroller - nobody does it better!

Their Christmas albums and discs are

the absolute best beyond which you can't get!

You must have at least a couple already.

If not, I can only ask "Why not?"

It's 1984 all over again!

Or maybe it's 2004...
  

Attention Shoppers!!!

It's C-C-C-Cold outside!

Cold, but quite a nice day!

Checked your antifreeze lately?

Got your thermal snuggies handy?

Going to California for the winter?

You'll miss the best skiing in the West!

A little 'catch-up' from yesterday...

These guys were raising hell here

yesterday morning, removing a

'danger tree' that's obviously been

one for decades!

They must have been saving it 

for a 'slow day'...

  And this little Maple at the mouth of that

driveway across the street looks lovely!

Around here today.....

If flowers could talk...

No tank top and shorts today!

 

Compared to that storm in the northeastern U.S.A., .......

.....we here on the south coast of Beautiful British Columbia in the so-called 'Great White North' have absolutely nothing to complain about at all. Except, perhaps, the scarcity of bikinis this time of year. Those fur-lined ones never did seem to really catch on..... except during the 'slush cup' downhill events at Whistler at the end of the season there. What some of those kids almost wear for that simply has to be seen to be believed, I kid you not.  
 

Walt Kelly's 'Pogo' classic.... just for you!

This goes back to a Christmas Past (1961, I think) and was a part of the album 'Jingle Bell Jazz' from back about then, featuring Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Chico Hamilton, Carmen McRae, Pony Poindexter, Herbie Hancock, Paul Horn, Dave Brubeck Quartet, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross ( doing this one here) Marlowe Morris, and Miles Davis.  It's a Columbia 12-inch LP, and now let's listen to the classic 'DECK US ALL WITH BOSTON CHARLIE'.......

And as long as I'm digging out the Golden Oldies here, I just can't stop without this one. It's one of my favorites done by Chet 'Mr. Guitar' Atkins, and I wish I'd bought more of his albums - I only have 25 of them.....

For Tommy in New York......

Here's a Blast From The Past to remind you there's only 56 more days until that fat old guy in the red suit comes by with his reindeer to poop on your roof and clog up the gutters! All I want for Christmas is the 2nd of January!
 

This just in from Tommy's place.....

So it seems that I was wrong - the state of New York isn't in the Banana Belt after all. Damn! I was sure that away down there in the sunny south, those banana trees would be sprouting at the rate of about half an inch an hour!

Today's 'Question Everything' is: "Does your local WalMart sell studded snow tires down there?" I think I'd get me some, if I were you, judging by that prematurely winterish climate you seem to have there.

Winter driving tip: To defrost or de-ice the outside of your windshield in a hurry, get a little empty spray-pumper bottle, like an old Windex bottle, and put some Isopropanol 99% in it, and give your windshield a few squirts of that to melt a light coating of snow, or morning frost, or even ice from it. The Isopropanol is also known as Rubbing Alcohol, but there's two different strengths of that, usually, and you want the pure (99%) stuff, not the 70% which is diluted with water. For what you're going to use it on, it doesn't need to be diluted beforehand. This stuff saves a lot of scraping of windows and windshields when you just want to get going. Try it!

And the snow came......

Today's Snow Report !

The folks at Grouse Mountain will be happy today.

It's the beginning of another busy season for them.

And time for the rest of you to start thinking about

getting your Season's Passes.

Speaking of which, check this out -

              Cypress Mountain alpine area passes              

Bought myself a Birthday Present.....

I've wanted one of these for a long time, and for almost as long as that, I've had a nice little Bissell Power Steamer which also does a very acceptable job of cleaning the carpets. So what does this one have that the Bissell didn't?

Me, for starters! But seriously - it does have one rather unique feature, and this is why I got it: the rotating scrub-brushes underneath the front edge, just behind that suction intake. There's five little brushes, geared together to rotate, scrubbing your carpet as the detergent solution is applied right through channels in that brush assembly, so in addition to simply applying a hot water and detergent mix and then sucking it back up out of the carpet with whatever it dissolved on its way in and out, this machine gives the carpet fibers a scrubbing as all that happens. The result is a better cleaning. And if you insist, you can switch off the rotation of the brushes, and just use the spray-it-on/suck-it-out system like my old Bissell does. Your choice. And it's nice to have choices.  And better to have really clean carpets!

Another nice sunset.....

Household Hint - Storing poly rope.

Wrap it on an old paper towel roll

to keep it from tangling up.

Works for me!

 

Sunset behind Vancouver Island

About Java and Firefox browser....

Everybody uses Java, right? And the latest version at this writing is Java 6, Update 29.  So why am I telling you this? Because... almost everybody also uses Firefox as their browser of choice - or us smart ones do, anyway. And therein lies the problem, Kiddies....

If you've done a couple of updates to your Java, or you have its automatic updates feature enabled, and you've then gone into your Firefox browser to check its Add-ons -> Extensions, and you've seen one or more entries there reading: "Java Console is incompatible with Firefox [version blah-blah]", and you don't know how to get rid of that silly entry because it doesn't have the usual [Remove] option button on it, then here's what to do to get rid of it:-

Go to -> C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\Extensions, and look for any and all entries which start with the letters CAFFE or CAFFEE plus more alphanumerics, and simply delete each one of those items. There may be only the one, or there may be more than one. Delete them all. Then, go back into your Firefox browser's Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions and check for the warning(s) about the incompatible Java Console. You'll find that it is now gone, and peace has returned to the valley. Enjoy your day!
 

More leaves

 

Another editing job....

 

Attention Skiers and Snowboarders!

First Flakes are here!

 

Today was like this -

Limited Visibility, as they like to say.

Not a very nice day for the repairs to be completed on Nice Old Bike, but it looks very nice with its newly repaired and freshly painted gas tank, and I'm going to let it enjoy itself over there at the Kawasaki Service on their Winter Layaway Plan until I start getting my annual "Bike Fever" next spring. Then, we will get back out there, playing in the traffic for another season.

 

More autumn leaves

They're turning......

Ours aren't as plentiful as those elsewhere,

because we don't have a lot of deciduous

trees here in the Pacific Rainforest.

Ours are mostly evergreens.