jimsjournal
 |
Christmas lights -- 12/07/01 | |
On Saturday we went out to a Christmas tree farm and cut down our tree. On Sunday Nancy and I brought it inside and set it up in the living room. Monday I got out the strings of electric lights. Tonight we will decoratethe tree.
You can see that we don't just leap into activities. *grin*
Setting the tree up took a good deal of time on Sunday. First Nancy and I had to rearrange the furniture in the living room to accomodate the tree -- this is a big tree. Then I had to cut the tree to the right size; 110 inch trees don't fit very well in rooms with a 96 inch ceiling. We were clever this year (oh, okay, we were following the suggestion of a guy who was riding on the same hay wagon as we were at the tree farm) -- instead of cutting off the bailing twine outside, we left the tree bailed until we had it fastened in the stand. That made it much easier to maneuver the tree into the living room (in fact, given how wide the branches are at the base, we would probably have had to bring it in through the slider doors from the back deck into the dining room and then into the living room, leaving a trail of pine needles on the floor) and also made it much easier to adjust vertical alignment. I think we've had our tree in the living room the first two years we lived here and since then we've used the den. This tree would have taken up half of the den.
Isn't it amazing how tangled strands of Christmas tree lights can become during the eleven months they spend in boxes on basement shelves. Garden hoses can get tangled; long extension cords can get badly tangled (I use an electric lawn mower); but nothing can get as tangled as Christmas lights.
The tree has now been standing in the living room all week with lights on it but no ornaments... everyone has been so busy that we had no evening when we were all awake and free of other obligations and tasks...
We will be doing our tree trimming this evening.... A Friday night... welcome to the weekend... Jennifer is sleeping now so she will be able to be awake this evening (she has to work tonight)... Sean will be home (he is grounded because of some poor grades on his report card)... Actually, we have to get all of the ornaments on tonight because I have to catch an airplane tomorrow...
I'm taking a vacation day today -- that use 'em or lose 'em quandry -- although actually I have been working most of the morning, very busy sending emails all around, trying to solve some problems caused by this week's air traffic controller's strike in France (it seemed as if a package of CDs with some important software was wandering in limbo, but the strike ended this morning and the package arrived -- a day late but it got there).
My plan now: upload this to Geocities, take a shower, have lunch, take my Christmas cards to the post office, do a little bit of food shopping, drop some overdue books at the library, pick up Sean from school (he's staying to make up a test) and come home an cook a turkey for dinner -- we want to have a nice big family dinner before I leave and this will also leave some good leftovers to get everyone through the weekend -- and do some laundry while the turkey cooks -- and then decorate the Christmas tree after dinner.
previous entry