30seconds.blogs.com: Chili, Poetry, Helping, and Jane Austen's semi-colons

It snowed all day Wednesday in Zurich, starting at -3 C (26F) and ending at -7 (19F). Lovely day (no sarcasm - we love winter; people generally know well how to drive in it here, and the plows don't chicken out). It hadn't snowed for the last 5 days (it rained instead, then was clear for two days), so we had missed it ;-).

It was the first time the driveway got shoveled four times on the same day: in the morning by Jason, in the afternoon by me, in the evening by our house guests trying to get their van into our carport and having trouble, and then finally again by me before I went to bed (since I still had to move my car into the garage and there was quite an amount again already). Funny. After all that snowiness, a hot chili con carne & corn & green peppers dinner over rice, with grated cheese, pieces of avocado, and sour cream on top, a crisp green salad on the side, and some fresh crusty bread was perfect.

Emily won a poetry prize at school, which included a 40CHF gift certificate to a bookstore. Wow. Way to go, Emily! The public reading of her poem in front of the whole middle school was a highlight in her day, which is much more than we can say for her painful, combined orthodontist/dental hygienist appointment after school. Hang in there, honey!

Jason was a star at home, cheerfully helping out in a myriad of ways:

- shoveling the driveway & volunteering to do it again tomorrow

- stirring & timing & tending the chili

- restocking the main fridge with juice & milk

- cutting up the avocado

- dishing out the sour cream

- grating the soft Asiago cheese (they sell it fresh & soft here, not aged and hard like I remember it in the U.S.)

- taking his out-of-town dad's place to thank God before dinner with our house guests

- loading the dishwasher after dinner with seven people's dishes

- encouraging his momma

I have been reading some of Jane Austen's Persuasion aloud to Emily at bedtime. Oh, my goodness - have you experienced these unbelievable Run-On-Sentences?

For instance, from Chapter Three, this 104-word sentence: