What We Did about a number of things, including snow

The driveway service came around at 2:30 a.m. (I know because Ista woke me up so we could watch), and so all I had left to shovel this morning was the front walk and the end of the driveway where the city plow had come after the driveway service. The driveway service had cleared the road in front of our house all the way up to the neighbors' driveway, just to reduce the results of the city plow, but it doesn't really quite work that way, so there was a fair lump of snow to handle at the bottom of the driveway. Plus the top bit right by the garage where their blade can't reach without damaging the house, and I wouldn't want them to try. So call it 45 minutes of shoveling. I could have made it more if I'd done a better job with the side of the driveway we don't use, but I had gotten shaky-ish and will go back and do it later if need be. And anyway it's supposed to snow in "plowable" amounts again tomorrow, so handling the touch-up work then should be fine, if it's even needed.

On Sunday at dinner I said, "I need this stuff. We're really going to miss you guys if global warming forces us to move to Churchill." And Mike said, "We'll come too." So that's tidy enough.

I hope those of you who are observing Hanukkah got off to a good start last night.

I'm having ones of those days where I'm adding more things to the to-do list than I'm removing from it. All good things, of course, sensible things, reasonable things, things I really should do. But they are, in fact, additional things. It turns out -- you will be quite surprised to hear -- that I was not actually short on things to begin with. Sigh.

I am drawing myself a map today, and figuring out some logistical details so that you lovely people don't read this book and go, "Wait, what? How do they feed that many people?" or, "That didn't make any sense when the Habsburgs did it; it sure doesn't make any sense now!" I have seen enough people bog down in these processes that I am a little leery of them, but I console myself that mostly that's when people use them for excuses not to write the book, and mine is written. Drafted. Getting improved. Really.

One of the bits of silliness that goes with this book being What We Did to Save the Kingdom is the attendant file names for related stuff: What We Did to Sum It Up, What We Did to Keep Track of the Details, What We Did to Annoy the Readers, and (of course) What We Did to Write the Sequel. (Also known as "The Evil Regent Visits the Evil Empire." But that's a long ways away; I may not have to figure out which book to write next, but unless there is a contract in my hand, it won't be that one.) And now I will go add to the actual book. I think this part will be fun. I don't much care for this stage of revisions, but today in specific looks just fine.

Omaha mall shooting

My grandparents have called. They're safe. They had been to that mall earlier in the day -- of course they had. Westroads was the mall of my childhood; my family's in and out of there for all of December. I have no reason to think that any of our family friends in particular would have been there, and as my grandparents left the mall to go to a friend's funeral, I expect the odds are lower, not higher, that someone close to me would have been there.

The next TV announcer who asks whether camo is normal in Omaha (answer: yes, moron, it's a military town) is going to get my mom's boot to his butt, but only because she's faster than me.