Winter, Work and Aventskalender

It is kind of hard to see, but there is a squirrel sitting on a itty-bitty branch, munching on some chow and I was wondering, if that branch was sturdy enough:)
We have pretty well fed squirrels.
As you can tell in the pictures, winter is definitely here.
It was a cozy (not) 1 F, when I went to work this morning. I am dreading tomorrow morning because of the severe weather warning...
Other than that, the training is going well and the job is shaping up to be very interesting.

Next week, I will start my normal work hours on my team and then it will really show, how things will work out....

Sunday was already the 2nd Advent. Do you guys celebrate that? Those are the 4 Sundays before Christmas?
In Germany, we also have the old tradition of giving each other Adventkalender, with 24 little presents or chocolates to count down the days in December until Christmas Eve. That is the day, when we open our presents.

This is mine, filled by Martin

This is Martin's. A friend of mine actually helped me sew it. It's quilted.

Epic Ski Day

Don't have any pictures yet for the blog and I am too tired to write
too much but we had an epic ski day.
5 hrs of skiing
all kinds of different kinds of slopes:
blue
green
black-blues
and then,we started to ski in the trees, in the deeper snow,
crossing from one slope to the other.
Big fun, high adrenalin kick, since you
cannot stop as easily, there are TREES and
lots of fluffy snow to stop you dead and suck you up,
oh and you can't turn, at least, I can't...
BIG FUN
UNTIL...
You come out on a BLACK slope (and black is an understatement),
STEEP
and with MOGULS that you can hide in between...
well, it is like Downhill MTB and it is a great work out.
By the way Marc, even though my HRM didn't work today, this was not a Zone 1 or 2 work out. I will show you the pictures. You will see
Later we went on to ski an area that can't be groomed.
It goes down trough trees, stumps, rocks, etc.
(the latter are mostly covered in snow)
Martin decided that I need a ski helmet for next year.
I didn't know those kind of runs existed until today,
not that I would ever ski them...