What do Stevie Wonder and Thomas have in common?

Both have played the Whiting, Stevie playing it last night to coincide with the Oscars.

Trying out new looks

 As you can see, I have been allowing foliage to flourish on my chin, it being chilly and all.

 Here's a closer look.  You can't see the weird asymmetry of white hairs, though, which is perhaps fortunate.  Anyway, like dear old Dad, I have very wiry hair, and GOD does it get itchy.  I finally couldn't bear it and it had to go.  (The worst part is where it over-hangs the upper lip so that you can actually bite it, and if you trim it it looks as if your lips have been badly photoshopped on top of the beard.)  But I thought, why not see if there was some as-yet-untried facial hair variant that was "me" while I'm about it.  So:

 "The Lemmy" (may he Rest In Peace).

 "The Village People" (Person?)

 "The Victorian"/"The Used-Record-Store-Employee."

"The Middle-Aged Tribble."

Unwelcome neighbours-to-be

There have been mysterious goings-on in the old video store next door for a while now. There's a little hole in the wall above our compost heap and you can see that there's a light on inside. People were up on the roof fixing wires. Steam rises from a heating unit on the roof. What can be going on? You hardly ever see people parked outside, and since somebody smashed the window a while back the windows and door have been boarded up (lovely), so you can't see in. Well, rumours abounded, and as we were hearing them from Jimmy we mostly discounted them, but it turns out that, as this document that came in the mail indicates, some dickweeds want to open a "Medical" Marijuana (spelled with an "h", which I haven't seen in print since things from the 50s) dispensary there. This despite the fact that (a) it's way too big, (b) there are quite literally about 10 within a mile radius (mostly on Dort, along with the strip-clubs, motels that charge by the hour, and a giant place where you can sell blood plasma) and (c) this is a residential area, not zoned for businesses. Jimmy is very excited, as you can imagine, but us not so much. Of all the things that could have gone in that building... We may even be pissed off enough to go to the meeting.

Purty

As indicated in yesterday's post, we finally had a nice snow storm, and one that continued through the night. It was that wet, heavy kind of snow, too - perfect for snowmen and also heart attacks for those who shovel. So I decided to pay Jimmy $10 to do the drive. But he ended up being SO SLOW that I had to do at least half of it myself. Anyway, here are some pretty scenes (apart from Captain Haddock at the end) of branches laden down with their mashed-potato burden.

Make up your @#$%ing mind, weather

Windy with weird warmth

Just as we thought Winter had finally kicked in, we got a strange wind that ushered in +50 degree weather (yes, that's Fahrenheit - we aren't in the Gobi Desert).  It took down branches everywhere.  The ducks must've been very alarmed in their hut at night when things like this were falling:

For scale (note slippers modeled on Wallace's (as in "and Gromit")

All right, so that's not too terrible, but there were entire trees elsewhere in the neighbourhood, honest!
Anyway, proof of warm weather - Frederick walking with no coat and no snow to be seen:

Chillaxin'

Winter finally came

It's been incredibly mild until last week when, of course, our central heating went out. It's since been repaired (at ungodly expense of course) but it remains damn cold. Proof: