Hoping you have a great vacation
and a very Merry CHIRSTMAS
WE WILL MISS YOU
GOD WILLING WE WILL SEE YOU IN 2016

Have a wonderful Christmas holiday, shorts. Hope you and those you love are showered with blessings.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Stay well and enjoy.

Enjoy your Christmas holiday! Judging from your symbol, you're from South Africa. What part of South Africa are you in?

Merry Christmas and Happy New year, Shortshoughton. Hope you have wonderful Christmas Holidays!

Merry Christmas Shorts. And Happy New Year.

In the US very few places of employment would close down for such a long period of time. Sometimes I think that is why the US was so successful for such a long time. Here many employees are urged to work as long as the employer needs them to work. Mostly it is service jobs that are only 4 hours a day. Even those people often get called to come in on their day off.

My brother and his wife had enforced 2 week holidays w/o pay every Christmas. They worked for a Japanese firm in CA.

Where do you live, retirenow?

Upstate NY state. It is a pretty rural area that used to have lots of farms, but few remain operating today. The young people don't want to work ridiculously hard for very little money and no pension for their old age. Our town has a state veteran's home as the biggest employer and a small factory as the next largest.

One of my bestest holiday thrills would be to ride in a one-horse open sleigh. Have ALWAYS wanted to do that!

Looks more like a snow cannon.

Catlady--are those the guns they shoot off to prevent avalanches? We saw a movie about a Swedish family who went to a posh ski resort in France and thoughout the movie the cannons were being shot off. It may save lives but it sure ruins the whole ambience. Too bad there isn't some other way to handle it.

Pixi, when I was a Boy Scout Leader we went camping in the snow at least twice a year. I remember one year we were high up in the mountains (with around 200 Boy Scouts and leaders) and the snow was at least 4 feet deep! The temperature got to -25 degree (F) both nights we were there. If you have the right equipment, you can stay quite comfortable. We had to use snow shoes (which we made by hand! ) to stay on top of the snow. We were in an area where avalanches don't happen, so no worries there. I had probably one of the best times of my life that weekend!

We had a home in the Catskill for 12 years and lived there for 7. In the winter we had lots of snow and in February the temperature sometimes got to -40! My husband used to love being able to endure the extreme weather but we never did a snow camp-out. We didn't have the money for expensive gear. We did ice skate on a frozen lake and it was scary because at intervals the ice would expand and crack giving off a sound like a gun shot. The best years of my life were spent in that house. I miss tha mountains and river.

Its not an oxymoron these days. I figure we just keep living our lives with an eye and ear to our surroundings. Those routinely texting and wearing earbuds or earphones in busy areas are putting themselves at risk on a daily basis anyway. Que sera sera.

I have always been afraid of lakes...you never know what's down there! We went ice fishing with a friend once (well, I watched) and I was scared to death the whole time. The ice was over two feet thick but I was petrified that it would crack and the lake would swallow me whole. But like you said, the ice makes noises. I thought it was beautiful! As the sun started to go down the lake began to talk...it had beautiful moans, scary cracks, and loud booms that sounded like cannons going off. I was afraid to move. But the fact that it was getting dark and my feet were frozen made me slip and slide to shore lot faster!

We live in view of a lake and I do plein aire landscapes. One January on a calm, sunny, 30 degree day I packed up my stuff on a plastic sled and headed for the far side of the lake. There were tracks from 4x4's and ski mobiles all over the place but I was still petrified. I work in acrylics which is a water base and had packed hot water in a hot water bottle in my ski pants under a warm windbreaker. I was comfortables and was enjoying painting but had to keep changing the water each time the paint on my brush began to turn to slush. The painting came out okay but somehow got a rip in the canvas. I don't ever plan to do that again.

I forgot to mention I kept aking water from the hot water bottle when it needed changing.

Amen.