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…. and to all a good night. Merry Christmas.

On this wintry day, on which a white Christmas has been delivered to many, "Merry Christmas." If you don't celebrate it as such, "Happy holidays." And, to @oldshurst442: "Kala Christougenna," "Joyeux Noel," and "Merry Christmas."

I clicked on the site to which I had an advert. It says: "Thinking of you in Tahiti". if Tourism Tahiti only knew how I loooooooong to be right there right now!!! To all at CheersandGears and all visiters to this site that have to endure this latest winter blast in all parts of North America right now. Enjoy the paradise! If only in pictures. Penser à vous à Tahiti. Ad Ce sentiment quand vous savez que c'est le début de quelque chose de spécial. Tahiti Tourisme Ouvrir

Not much of a blizzard and storm in my parts of Montreal. So that is a good thing. In other parts in and around my neck of the woods is as bad as the news says it was going to be. But not as bad as other parts of Ontario, in the Toronto region. Very windy though here right now. @David Ice sucks. I thought that in my area, we would have ice problems too, but that never happened. Thursday night to Friday morning, we had a about 6 inches of snow. The news said that we were going to get hit hard. A foot of snow was announced, but it never happened. Then Friday morning, our temperatures rose above freezing and was raining a good part of the day. Again the news said that the temps were going to dip just below freezing and the rain will turn to freezing rain and sleet and by the afternoon, then to snow and another storm to hit. Well, the rain just remained rain and the snow never happened. All to say that I closed the store early yesterday as to prevent any unnecessary headaches. Usually, we are open Christmas Eve until 5:00 PM, but I decided to keep the restaurant closed. There was no reason to keep the restaurant closed, and there is some houses without power in my area due to the high winds, to which I was probably going to be busy today, but my staff is tired, Im tired, my manager is tired... We are all going to enjoy Christmas and Christmas Eve with our loved ones early. We all deserve the rest. I am paying my staff today as if they were working. Another small little XMAS bonus for them. The only thing I do care about though is that my restaurant does have power, some households do not. I hope the community was not relying on my restaurant to have food... There are several fast food joints that are actually closed as well... I dont know if they have power or not, or lack of staff, but not many restaurants are open today... I went to the restaurant this morning to see about the heating. No electricity equals no power which equals no heat which equals frozen water pipes which equals busted pipes which equals a mess to which I witnessed all 3 McDonald's in my area closed and other fast food joints as well...

It's 1F now after about 20 hrs of negative temps. 'warming up' to 10 by this evening. Probably ice on my driveway under the snow. Haven't been outside since Thursday evening. Warm, power on, just made my 2nd cup of coffee...

My greeting from Mother Nature this morning. Not at all amused by this.

The new China built Encore GX has largely taken its place. The EcoSport was built in India and never sold well. Ford should probably find a way to build it on a new platform somewhere else. They were pretty wretched to drive, so it isn’t surprising that people didn’t like it. The Trailblazer and Trax are better. We swung from 40 to -3 in 18 hours