I
haven't had a chance to mention it until now, what with all the
Christmasing and the JW entry and the trivia, but I did ultimately buy
a real tree this year. A friend and I were at Target picking out
her tree, when this really nice, medium-sized, old fashioned,
German-style, short-needled one introduced itself to me and
demanded to be taken home. The Target people weren't allowed to
hold trees for customers, but one of them did anyway when I promised to
be back in half an hour. I gave my friend and her tree the bum's rush
home, dashed back, and got my tree put into my car by one of the Target
guys just as the sun was going down.
John
was a little annoyed about this, because a) I hadn't consulted him, b)
the expense, and c) it meant getting a bunch more Christmas boxes down
from the shelves in the laundry room. I pointed out that I hadn't
had a real tree in several years, and really really wanted one.
Besides, I was willing to clean up more of the junk in the front room
to make room for it.
So
we did that. I cleaned up a bunch of Mom's old stuff, and John
moved furniture and put the tree up. I got to hang my favorite
ornaments, all the Peanuts characters and Shrinky-Dink Beatles, Santas
and scrimshaw reindeer, bunny in a bag, homemade ones from co-workers
and relatives, the goldfinch and other birds and the cardboard Kliban
cats. They were all in one box, so I skipped over everything else, the
ugly Harry Potter ones and ordinary glass balls and so on. I
missed the wooden block and Quasimodo, but the other good ones all got
up, along with two strings of bubble lights (one bubbler of which I
broke by stepping on it) and a couple of garlands. It came
out pretty well, not overdone or overloaded. It even seemed
worth staying up until 4 AM Christmas morning to get it done, along
with the wrapping of John's presents.
That
is, it all seemed worthwhile until the tree fell over on the 26th,
causing much friction and consternation. In the end we had to
lean it against the curtains and leave the lights off. I only turned
them on just long enough to take this picture.
****
No
gifts of the Magi for us; we both got stuff we wanted and needed: a new
office chair for me, a new DVD burner for John to replace the one that
died after eight months of use. Under the terms of the Blocher Holiday
Meal Agreement, we didn't mess with cooking, but went to Golden
Corral. It wasn't fancy, but it was better than Boston Market.
****
As
I mentioned over on my LiveJournal blog, I recently signed up with a
weird website called BlogShares. It's partly a way to link to and
promote blogs, but mostly it's a game in which blogs are traded like
shares of stock. I haven't figured it out very well, but I bought
shares in my blogs and the St. Michael's ones, and in Jeff's
blog. I'll probably "invest" in a couple of Shelly's blogs
later. The site doesn't seem to handle AOL-J well--Musings STILL
hasn't been indexed--but it's still kinda neat, albeit
bewildering. Someone I don't know gave me shares of a library
blog in some unknown language (Swedish? Dutch?) right after Christmas,
ostensibly as a holiday gift. Today there was a leveraged buy-out by
that same person, which left me $23,000 and change richer in BlogShares
play money. I assume that the blog's owner also made a killing
from such machinations, but this accounting major has no idea
how. Still, it was rather exciting, and I blew a bunch of the B$
on more shares of my own blogs.
****
I
talked to my dad at some length tonight. It turns out that he's
perfectly willing to answer all my questions about his WW II
experiences, including his time as a POW. He also mentioned that
his generation wouldn't generally put their intimate details online as
I do. (Dad, meet Chuck F!) John, who also wouldn't post about
himself if he had a blog, almost bought me a T-shirt for Christmas that
says, "I'm blogging this."
Time to get on with the holiday trivia. Only two questions tonight, I think.
Karen
Just posted on Mâvarin and Other Inspirations: "Did anybody order a college graduate?"
5 comments:
Sorry to hear about your tree falling over, I hope it didn't break any of your nice ornaments.
I had seen blogshares, but never looked around in it-I'm going to have to go sign up and buy some of your shares :)
http://pointclickjeff.blogspot.com/ Jeff
You got a real tree! Too bad it misbehaved. LOL Oh and guess what...I got the "I'm Blogging This..." shirt. XXXL. LOL It looks good. ;-)
I have a couple of falling tree stories too, but mine always involve a cat.
Glad you got a real Tree!
V
I love that last pic of your dog!! Mine HATES his sweater - I can't imagine what he'd do if I put him in a Santa hat....muah ha ha ha haaaaa something to save until next year!!
=) kris
http://journals.aol.com/kristeenaelise/thedailypurge
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