Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Merry Little Christmas


Today was one of those days when I'm so very thankful that I can work from home sometimes. Because today was a day when I wanted to do that. It was frigid all day. It's 4 now. It has snowed almost all day. It's just been a generally unpleasant day to be out and about.

I was supposed to go to the diversity luncheon today but didn't. I spent that time dragging up more boxes of Christmas stuff from the basement and making myself homemade pizza.

Tonight I decorated and made some real progress. I finished the lights on the tree early this morning and started decorating it. Then I did some more tonight.

At one point I snapped a photo of the various boxes of lights I had unpackaged to add to the tree. I buy a supply every year when they get cheap so I'm prepared for the next year. I have almost depleted my supply this year. I went a little crazy with the lights.

People are always asking me how many lights. A few years ago I stopped telling people because they're either one - shocked. Or, two - shocked and disapproving. I just stopped telling people how many - then I don't have to deal with it. This year is my best one ever, I think. I was glad I had a stash of lights from which to draw. I just say there are "thousands" of lights. That's accurate. And vague.

There was an accident on the corner about 5:30 tonight. I heard it and went out on the porch and looked. I'm not sure what happened but there were police vehicles there for more than an hour afterwards. I never saw an ambulance, but there were flashing red and blue lights for a long time. I walked out onto the porch, but that was as far out of the house as I got today.

I truly am thankful I can work from home. This time of year I've got a ton of paper/computer things to do and I generally do those on my home computer anyway as the work computer can't handle too many things. So, I had a productive day without having to go outside.

Greg got home tonight and I'm so glad he's back safe and sound.

It's rare I'm interested in something on television but I wanted to see the White House Christmas special on HGTV tonight. I was a little disappointed in it. The plan this year was to use all natural things - lots of fruit and fresh flowers. I guess I'm old fashioned. I like my red and green and glitter and glow. The other stuff is fine as additions, but I need my basic Santa and tree contingent covered this time of year.

I took some video of the tree with the lights on today - before I started putting ornaments on. I had planned to post it but I'm not sure what format to use and how to get the .mov file my camera took it in into whatever is useful. I found a tool to convert it into an .avi file but those seem really large. Oh well, maybe I'll figure it out.

I have done a couple more podcasts. Those are easy for me since I can just adlib them, and they seem to be striking a cord with some people, so that's good.

Well, time for bed for me. We have a screening tomorrow and I have a lot of things to do before then.

Art of Gracious Living Podcast #3


I love Christmas and one of my favorite parts of it is putting the ornaments on the tree. I have some I've picked up on trips and also ones people have given me. I treasure them as they're tangible reminders of the relationships I'm blessed to have.

Listen to Art of Gracious Living Podcast #3

Snow!


It's a blamy 7 degrees at 4:06 a.m. And we have snow... not a dusting but enough to cover the ground.

I looked outside the second I woke up. I decided to just stay up. I think I'll put some pumpkin bread in the oven, turn on some Christmas carols until Morning Edition comes on, and work on the tree.