@jununger Nice! I live right next to you, so mine is bound to be here soon, too :). Today is a holiday here in Finland (independence day), so no mail gets delivered. Probably my package will be here tomorrow. Looking forward to it.

Awesome! Looking forward to mine too, but it might take a bit longer to get to the United States 😄

As I predicted my packs (ordered two of them) arrived today - very happy with the quality of the cards and packaging!

Will keep the other pack as an unopened collector's item at least for now.

Mine came today i like the set alot.

One question: in the future will the card sets feature all of the girls cards for the year instead of just the girls that came out during the year?

Finally got my set today......3 weeks from order to delivery.

Mine got to California about three days ago.

Haven't even opened the shipping package yet tho...

Might wait to see what else Santa brings me first in case I need a mood lifter.

Last year I got enough coal to heat the house for few days...😕

I gave my Mum and Dad 2 tons of Coal for Christmas one year..
Thinking it would save them from buying it, and heat the house for a few months...
then they would have that money in their Pocket.

They never forgave me, and always asked,
what they did wrong, that I would give them coal for Christmas?

@Wyldanimal They never forgave you? 😶 😆

That's harsh... I, with my siblings, considered the very same thing for my parents through many christmases when they lived in our "old house", for the heating of which they could have had benefit of coal.... Well, they moved at one point and the problem got rid of itself :)

We always thought that would have been a superb christmas gift that we never came to put into reality!

The old "lump of coal for Christmas" thing, huh ?

Damnit man

I actually did get a "lump of coal" last year.

My brother bought it as a gag gift and gave one to me and another to my dad....

Came wrapped in twine and plain brown paper with no frills and said To Ron From Santa and had a note inside that said "I guess you can tell which list you were on this year...stay warm"

The lump was about a 1/2" cubed so I wouldn't have stayed warm for long. Thank goodness the gas and electric bill was current.

"Merry Christmas" was distinctly missing from the greeting or note...

No coal this year and got some cool stuff to go with the cards from iStripper so this holiday goes in the positive side of the ledger but no 4k monitor so I guess it's up to me to provide my own.

Happy Holidays and New Year to our whole community!!!

timing is everything.. for New Years there is the tradition of First Footing where you might receive a lump of coal as a good omen that you will always be warm through the coming year

@pumpdude48

Heating? In California? The land of perpetual summer.? Damn, I could use some coal here near Winterpeg. Those numbers are In Fahrenheit.

@Chicky hopefully that is only outside ait temp and you are snug inside. Otherwise you are in serious need of a hug.
Oddly, i have seen southern Californians and southern Floridians put on winter coats when the temp falls below 60F. That is summer heat for some.

A bit nippley, is it ???

@Chicsans

I actually live in north east california and we occasionally see some rather cool temps but nothing like what you get up there.

However, I grew up outside of Minneapolis/St. Paul (Apple Valley) Minnesota and also spent a couple years in Cheyenne Wyoming.

As such, I have spent many a year in sub zero weather and since my folks ***** snow during the winter in both places and had a towing company in Cheyenne, I have some considerable experience with being outside in rather "cool" temps and in Cheyenne they were usually accompanied by winds in excess of 20 mph as well. Sometime I'll tell you about laying under a semi truck on the side of Hwy 80, east of Cheyenne in January during a snow storm at 2am trying to take the drive line down so I could tow the truck into the local truck stop. The truck's fuel had gelled up and we had to tow it in to the shop to warm it up enough to re-liquefy the fuel so it would start. The ambient temp was 8 degrees F and the winds were gusting to about 30 mph blowing the snow right under the truck I was working on. Rather unpleasant working conditions.

All that being said, I can totally appreciate your situation and truly hope you stay inside and warm and make sure your fuel doesn't gel so you can keep the engine warm and moving down the road...

I gave my Mum and Dad 2 tons of Coal for Christmas one year..
Thinking it would save them from buying it, and heat the house for a few months...
then they would have that money in their Pocket.

They never forgave me, and always asked,
what they did wrong, that I would give them coal for Christmas?

Sadly, (or lamely) I can top that. 😐

Here is an unfortunately true story that should at least get a few laughs at my expense:

Ages ago, when I was married less than a year, my wife's birthday was coming up. We were also freshly installed in the house that we still live in today. Not having much experience with either married life or females in general at that point and also not having a lot of discretionary funds to spend back then I chose to purchase as a gift, an appliance that in my inexperienced (read: clueless) mind would be helpful to my wife. She spent a lot of time sweeping the floors and even the carpets so I bought her what at that time was a fairly decent hoover vacuum with a bunch of attachments thinking it would help her and make her job easier. 😖

EPIC FAIL!!! 😳

What I didn't know or expect, was instead of just opening it with me alone, that she would save what was a fairly large and heavy box to open in front of her sisters/girlfriends....parents.... her thinking that I had been extra thoughtful and bought her something substantial and personal. Imagine her embarrassment when she opens my substantial (but rather IMpersonal) gift in front of all those people and I had given her a household cleaning appliance and her people thinking that I was dissatisfied with her previous efforts enough to deliberately give her a "chore tool" in front of her family. 😒

Clueless though I was back then, I could not fail to notice the chuckles and comments (even though most were in Spanish, I got the gist of them) directed at her from her people. I say "people" because I am a caucasion American from Norcal (have lived many other places but born here and have been back for over 25 years) but my wife was from Mexico and I was the "token" white boy in her rather large family where mine is just my brother and me. Her family has some rather old traditional values concerning a Woman's place in the home and my fopah was more than just a little unfortunate.

Sigh...

Needless to say the "marriage relationship" was somewhat "frosty" 😰 for a good little while after that and even 25 years later I still hear about it occasionally and none of her people have forgotten either... 😫

@pumpdude48

Breaking the driveline is nasty under any conditions. I have the utmost respect for heavy wrecker operators, they work in the most adverse conditions.
I use number 2 diesel fuel, I don't know at what temp it gels at, but I have run at -40° with it. Of course at that temperature other, more nasty things can happen

@muttonjeff

I'm always in serious need of a hug, they are so nice. And valuable too. 😊

@Chicsans

It was a fairly common money maker for us in the winter time to tow trucks into the truck stop shops due to diesel fuel gelling up at the time I was doing that sort of thing. I suppose the fuel may have additive straight from the refinery up where you are because they know it will be a problem otherwise. That wasn't always the case during my time, especially if you bought cheap fuel. I never understood the cheap fuel thing when you saved 5 cents a gallon but had to spend $20 or more for cold weather additive that the more expensive fuel already had.

Cheyenne was a lucrative place to run a towing business if you could handle the weather. We had two major freeways and two major railroads that crossed there. Lots of truck traffic passing through. Lots of inexperienced or fair weather drivers made for lots of calls for the big wrecker during winter conditions, which in Wyoming can be almost anytime of the year.

Unfortunately, the wife ***** it so I ended up back in Norcal so she could be close to her family and a long ways from mine. (Not that I really blame her for feeling that way).

Stay warm up there, drive safe and keep the tires rolling on the pavement under you.

Happy New Year!

If you want to hear a weird one, one of my work colleagues is from New Zealand and one his relatives ran a trucking company in the mountain areas of New Zealand where temperatures are very low in winter.

He told me that the trucks were parted over steel plates and in the morning when it came time to start them up for work, they would splash a quantity of petrol on the steel plates and light it, to warm the engines etc, so that they would start after the petrol burnt out.

Very dangerous thing to do, but if that was your habit of many years, then your experience would make sure that you did it right 😲

Uh wow, that sounds just a teensy bit on the crazy side but they probably didn't have convenient electricity to plug a heater into. I bet the mechanics made extra sure to keep the oil/fuel leaks sealed/cleaned up...

Nobody ever said that Kiwi truck drivers were entirely sane 😂😆. And the owners who were trying to gain that necessary experience must have felt some heartbreak watching their units *****.

When I was growing up, my dad used to fill a pail or a metal coffee can with oily deisel soaked rags, set this under the vehicle and then light it on fire. There wasn't enough oxygen to sustain a flame for long, but the thing would smoulder for hours, providing enough heat to keep the oil in the crankcase fluid enough to start the engine. The joys of living on a farm in BF Nowhere.

I grew up in southern England and have never experienced issues as severe as oil freeze. However at 16 i owned an Isetta "bubble car" (you could drive them on a motorcycle license) I remember a harsh winter where the petrol froze in the fuel line. That took a lot of hot water to clear .. I was not going near the fuel line with fire.

It's just a personal opinion, but I think that temperatures below 10°F should be banned.