WEATHER REPORT TWO--MORE SNOW

On Christmas Day we woke up to almost a foot of fresh snow on the ground.  After opening presents and stuffing ourselves on turkey, some of our family adjourned to the yard for snowman construction.

The snow was a little dry and it wouldn’t roll.

The kids took it as a challenge and resorted to stomping the snow down in storage tubs.

They stacked the big hunks up with plenty of decisions on design and engineering.

They went so far as to take some of the snow inside to warm it up enough to use as mortar between the blocks.  Complaints from inside followed.

The snowman grew in size and personality.

 Finished product!

This morning we got up to discover even MORE snow.  Beavis was soon putting our new snow thrower to good use to dig out our driveway.  I’ve drawn a red line around the snow on top of my car so you can see how much had fallen.

 When the guy with the snow plow came by to clear the street we welcomed him with mixed feelings.

 Note the big wall of snow he is leaving across our parking area.

Still, the snow blower took on the drift and sent it high into the air.  When Beavis was through there, he went across the street and plowed out our new neighbors.  They are from Taiwan and haven’t had time to tool up for Idaho weather yet.

Just for fun here is a little animation of what it's like to be inside when Beavis goes by the window with the snow blower.

WEATHER REPORT

Our December in Southeast Idaho has been unusually warm.

For quite a while our backyard looked like this.

Then we got this wimpy snow.  It wasn't long before that all melted.

We were all wondering, where's the white stuff?

Yesterday morning we woke up to a BIG storm.

Along with lots of presents, Santa brought us a white Christmas!

A note to Linda Sue from The Elf.

"Where in stinkin' $#!+* Siberia did you send me?!"

VIRTUALLY ROAMING

The Virtual Paintout is visiting Rome this month so I went along to see where Google Street View could take me to set up my easel.

Since the cameras stayed mostly on the street there was no looking inside the Vatican or the Sistine Chapel.  But that’s okay because there’s a virtual tour of the chapel which takes a while to load but gives a chance to examine everything there at leisure without the crowds.    http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html

 Another disappointment was seeing the Trevi Fountain drained and being renovated. 

A news story by the BBC, related in a very Cumberbatch voice, can be found here.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29175316

Still, there were several museums available for virtual tour, mostly filled with lots of marble statues in various stages of undress, and lots of chunks of columns and relics from ancient structures.

No Google Street View car went down the Spanish Steps like cars do in every action movie shot in Rome. 

But I found a great view of the city from the top of the steps which I used to create this painting.

There is also a very thorough tour of The Coliseum.

 So I used one of the halls where a guy was doing a photo shoot as my next subject.

see my location here:  http://goo.gl/maps/abUvL

Then I virtually wandered down into the city and noticed an exhibit of Warhol Paintings was on display there.

So my last painting was a driveby of the show posters.