November 30 – “Christmas Attack”

Well, the big time Christmas Attack has officially occurred.  I was assigned my usual endeavor … put up the outside lights.  We have the strands all marked, so it’s easy to remember where they go.  The issue, however, was the same one encountered by virtually everybody who attempts such Yuletide frivolity.  Two of the strands had stretches with numerous bulbs that were refusing to light up.  Now in the olden days, all you had to do was replace a burned out bulb or two and you were good to go.  Nowadays, with these hangy-down, sparkly, icicle things, it is almost impossible to track down the infringing tiny bulb that causes all the trouble.  And to make matters worse, it shuts down not the entire rest of the strand, which would make perfect sense.  Oh, no.  It just selects a random stretch of perfectly good lights and shuts them down, then allows the rest of the strand to light up again.  No particular reason other than to add to the frustration of the Christmas hanger-upper (that would be me).  On a more positive note, Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus are all good.  Their lights were replaced by some old colored ones that I scraped off the paint from.  Old school all the way.

I think Chris has finished the interior of the house.  I even got some décor in my office.  I’m pretty excited about that.  No Scrooge-ing for this old boy.  She did give me leave to make room in the garage to store the boxes for the season, so there is that.  We did run into one problem, though.  When she went to put away the Fall/Thanksgiving/ Halloween stuff, it didn’t all fit back into the bin.  She somehow accumulated just a bit more.  We did make a trip to WalMart, so two more strands of lights are in hand.  And dog food.  And fruit.  And Cheetos.  Umm.  No plastic tub though.  Guess we’ll have to go back.  Imagine that.

The cable guy came and replaced our cable remote.  Now we have to get used to a different placement of all the buttons.  Not sure why they do that, other than it has to look different to give them an excuse for development.  It does do what it’s supposed to, though.  As the guy was leaving he made a crack about the fact that the cable had been stuck on ESPN.  Could have been worse, I guess.

Psalms 8:9 says, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

Father, I guess the lights officially announce the beginning of the season.  Kind of like the star did the first time around.  Excitement all around.  Amen.