cheerful
This looked more menacing than I think it does in the photo.
It has been (relatively) warm the last few days and most of the snow has melted except in a few sheltered spots. As this storm moved toward us, the wind came up and there was a bit of rain, but not much more. This, however, is only the edge of a series of storms, and the effect is much worse up in the mountains, where the chain controls are back up on I-80. My initial plans to go spend a week at the Bay Area office next week are scratched.
Those firelogs we bought are working out quite nicely. They burn for a long time and produce very little smoke or ash, while keeping the living room warm. (It has helped that the temperatures have been above freezing all week.) Instead of my having to bring four or five armloads of cordwood from the wood pile every day, I bring one wheelbarrow load (about 15 logs) every two days from the garage. (We keep the logs in the garage because they can't be allowed to get wet, given that they are mostly compressed sawdust.) The only drawback is that it's unwise to burn more than two of the logs at a time (they get too hot) and therefore it's difficult to keep a fire going all night long. Lisa has been up nights this week and has seen to the fire. When that's not an option, we still have almond and walnut with which we can fill up the fireplace and still expect to find coals burning the next morning.