I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Decoration Weekend

Well, the weekend after Thanksgiving is here and it's time to decorate for Xmas. I'm way behind on my chores so today will be spent catching up. We'll start by raking very wet and cold leaves and scrubbing bathrooms. I probably won't be able to get on the roof because of the wet so hopefully we'll have a warm dry spell where I can get the leaves off the roof. Depending on how my back is holding up (I slept wrong, those of you who are young don't know what I'm talking about) I'll probably put some decorations out. My Mom gave us two inflatable snowmen for Thanksgiving (well, it was also Bette and I's wedding anniversary) so I might put those out next to our normal inflatable snowman.

I'm not really a big fan of inflatable decorations, although my neighbor across the street goes hog wild for them. I like that they store easily, and that you can see them in the daylight, but they use a huge amount of electricity. My outside sockets are on the same circuit as my living room (yeah, one of those things you learn after buying your first house). I need to hire my nephew to change that. Normally when I turn on my Xmas lights the house lights dim. I've been migrating to LED lights because of that (fortuantely I can afford them at this point), but I haven't been able to find white-wire white lights that I can relamp the deer with. I also will try and relamp some of my Xmas tree with LEDs this year. Bette also wants to go multi-color, so that works together.

In other news, Bette got me On Writing Horror for our anniversary. Have I said how much I love my wife?

5 comments:

Todd Wheeler said...

Do the Xmas lights rival the Halloween display?

Steve Buchheit said...

Sometimes, although these past few years I've cut back a little (no more star lights in the trees). For brightness, oh yes, Xmas has more lights, but I don't think it has as much theme (although it does mostly). I didn't get to cutting out the wood this year. Hopefully next year will see a big train on thw lawn.

The inflatables Mom gave don't work very well. But they're out there. I'm not sure if they'll survive the season.

My neighbor put out his decorations yesterday, he has two new inflatables; on is motorcycle and th eother had a reigndeer helping Santa out of the chimney.

Todd Wheeler said...

Big train on the lawn. Like Polar Express? I have a sudden, inexplicable urge to get something like that...

Allyn Paul said...

This is not one of those spam messages that people leave, even though it may look that way. I just posted about this very topic over at my blog.
www.lifeandlawns.blogspot.com

I do not like the blowup waving santas or snow dudes either. I like the lights clean and neat.
Plus, we're in chicago and the winds here knock those inflatable things over, so in the morning, it looks like a bad slasher movie on your front lawn. LOL

Steve Buchheit said...

Todd, I'm not sure what the design is going to be like, although the actual construction probably won't be 3d.

Allyn, no worries, you installation, though, looks a little too professional for me. I tend not to decorate my actual outside house structure but have things on the lawn. With Xmas I do put lighted garland (I buy the garland and lights separately) along the rail of my outside stairs, and I have a little wicker angel I've strung LED lights through that I put at the railing curve. Everything else outside is either free standing or in the trees. I also tend to make my own stuff when I can't find what I want, and I collect over several years to complete a look. Such as for Halloween I buy a few new tombstones each year and if I can find the jack-o-lanterns I get one or two new ones, but they're all about the same proportion so they look good together.