[ transplog ]

Ahh, what happiness awaits the nose when gingersnaps are a-bakin': the pungent high notes of ginger followed by a heady clove undertone.

And freshly baked gingersnaps are tasty too.

Although the commercial holiday hawkers would argue otherwise, my festive spirit has arrived just in the nick of time. Who can drum up visions of sugarplums in early November, when the first crop of plastic snowflakes and silver garland appears on shelves? To each their own timetable for finding the festive spirit.

At last a festive spirit arrives at the homestead.

A portrait of tasty beerage, Saint Arnold's Divine Reserve 8:

And like any good portrait these days, the Divine Reserve received a little creative processing to hide the wrinkles and show off its shapely glass figure.

The snowfall in Houston didn't accumulate—sizeable flakes whirled onto the ground only to melt there—but the dip in mercury produced a proper frost the next morning. For an hour or so, leaves and grass and even windshields wore a fragile blanket of frost.

The morning frost forms a silvery brocade across the ribs of a palm frond.

The morning sun quickly dispatched these signs of winter.

And so the Houston area returns to its version of the season: balmy temperatures and the occasional rainstorm.