Pirate!

Pirate ROCKS.

Pirate, who is 7, was staying that she wanted to stay up and see Santa.  I told her that she couldn't, because he was unobservable.  Then I jokingly suggested that it was a quantum effect.  Then, having started that, she wouldn't let it rest until I explained Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, wave-particle duality, the double slit experiment, quantum superposition, and quantum decoherence.

"Aha!", said Pirate.  "Now I know how Santa gets to every house in the world on one night.  He's in a superposition, and he visits all of them at once and puts presents under every tree at once!"

Dambusting

On a small scale.  We have a fairly solid thaw going here, and there's running water in the gutters.  So I took the opportunity to get a stepladder out on the main deck, take my big hatchet, and chop a couple of big drain holes in the ice dams along the edge of the roof.  If the thaw holds all week, as is forecast, we may be able to get at least the back eaves ice-free.

When money permits, we need to get a lot more insulation into this roof.  As a stopgap, when the weather permits, I'll lay heat tape under the first couple of courses of shingles along the eaves.  That should be enough to at least mitigate further ice dams.  With luck, the rest of winter won't be as severe; we got dropped in the deep end with the sixth snowiest December on record in New Hampshire.