Everyday Stupidities

Hello, all. You still out there? Great. I skipped a week but it wasn't really intentional... seems I had some cool stuff to say two weeks ago, thought about it for four or five days, and then come Monday or Tuesday I could not for the life of me remember what it was. And I still can't, but it was great. I might have remembered what it was about last night when I was writing something else, but I didn't follow my own advice and write it down so again it's lost. It'll be back someday. And it is good, whatever it is. Say, has anyone seen Jamie Dawn since Halloween? The semester's over (but is the move?), we're here waiting for you! By the way, it happened again: someone doing a vanity search for a friend's name came across reference to him in one of my online screeds, and let me know they found me. The friend in question has been deceased since 1985 and the person said that my entry was the only actual mention of him she's been able to find. I still want to be cremated and scattered rather than given a stone, for the record.

So a couple days ago my Christmas tree went up. Shortly before I wrote the previous Stupidities entry, I brought all the ornament boxes in the house and sorted through them, as mentioned, to get anything related to snowflakes and snowmen (and the cardboard Christmas village from the 1950's) gathered for the display case, and green, white, and clear lights and ornaments assembled for the tree in the livingroom. Nearly two weeks later, I brought in our wonderous artificial arbor and spent the rest of the night screwing in lights and putting up the strings, then we decorated it. Lights aren't a simple deal for me; since there was a theme to follow, I picked up every greenish, whitish, or clearish C-7 light in the house to put on the tree somewhere. Having taken nearly all the glass flake-ish stuff to the library, this meant we had to run out and buy some more -- oh, and we made our own crystal flakes out of borax detergent and pipe cleaners chenille sticks. The link above is the Flickr page showing how the tree turned out, which you'll want to see at full size (warning: 2.2mb image). It came out pretty good. Now all we have to do is get or wrap some presents and it'll look the way it's supposed to. Offhand we have no plans to go anywhere for Christmas, and we have no known visitors coming between now and the New Year. That's the plan, kids: there is no plan. Don't ask again, it's not going to change. I think I've done all my shopping for the year; my wife has not mentioned anything practical she wants (and I've asked once a week for a month) so I guess I don't have to worry about failing to fill her list! Full disclosure, I haven't really got a list myself, so she's having the same issue... yet she hasn't asked what I want, that's the difference. Uh, hmm, for that reason this should be interesting.

Also last week I pledged to show you the house lights. Here ya go! There's been one addition, a very large twinkling snowflake in the livingroom window, but I'm sure you've seen plenty of those lately so just envision it on the left side.