Let There Be Light
Hello World,
Happy December! We seem to have finally turned the corner into winter in the local area (although technically, the actual Winter Solstice is not for another couple of weeks yet) and it's gotten much colder, and pretty darned quick besides. I remember one Saturday a few weeks ago, when the weather reports were predicting frost and overnight lows below freezing, and I hurried out and put the bird bath heaters in both bird baths lickety-split, and glad to get this done before they both froze solid. This had the effect of making the temperature go up 20 degrees overnight, so that by Sunday morning, I couldn't help but wonder what all the fuss was about. But last weekend, we had snow flurries (when it was still November) and the temperature has really dropped so that even when the sun is out, you can still tell it's December, and no joke. Why, at this rate, people are bound to stop wearing flip-flops any day now.
This coming Sunday, we should be lighting the second candle on our Advent wreaths, so the time is flying for anyone who may not be completely prepared for the gift-giving occasions of their choice coming up. At our house, the Advent Anthem Brigade (who shall remain nameless, but looks suspiciously like me) was not at the top of its game on Sunday, so we wound up lighting the wreath on Monday instead, opting for quality over timeliness. (Although it must be said that the perception of quality is judged solely on a subjective basis, which may actually have no foundation in reality, and I ought to know.) One reason that the Advent Anthem Brigade was woefully unprepared for its moment in the spotlight on Sunday, and on time as it should have been, was that it was busy instead putting up Christmas lights around the place, upstairs and downstairs, inside and out. We got some new lights for this year, along with the old tried and true, so it looked pretty festive when it was all said and done, and as for visions of sugarplums dancing, well, it goes without saying.
While we're on the subject of lights, we get the following story from Bill, when the overhead lights blew out where he works:
=====================================
As for the stupid lights, they're still out. Luckily, Danny recommended an electrician he knew who is, understandably, equally as reliable as Danny is. This guy showed up 2 hours after Tommy put in his 'EMERGENCY" call. When he walked in -- into the dark room -- he said "So, what's the problem?"
=====================================
And now for the local area gasoline report, courtesy of our friendly neighborhood Sunoco station down the block. Of course, everyone realizes that gas prices would continue to plummet, especially since I went ahead and got gas last week, and in fact, there was a note on the AOL Welcome screen recently that said gas prices were the lowest they've been in 3 years, and I don't doubt it. At the Sunoco, I had been watching the price of regular come down all week, until it finally reached $2.09 when I came home from work this afternoon, from $2.11 yesterday, and even I was surprised at that. But when Bill and I drove past it later on the way home after dinner, it had gone down again, to $2.07, just since the time that I left work! This kind of thing just has to make you shake your head and wonder, because there's something about this that is just not right, and that's not just John D. Rockefeller talking, believe me.
In other news, if you missed the night sky on Monday of this week, you really missed a show that was worth seeing. I came home from work and said right to Bill that he needed to go straight to a window and look out, immediately if not sooner. He replied that he didn't need to do that, because he had already seen it, and in fact, even took pictures of it, because it was so spectacular. All in one spot and bright as anything, there was a perfect sliver of the moon, plus Venus and Jupiter to the side. Bill said it looked just like the flag of Turkey, and it certainly did. It was really a sight to behold, and the three of them so close together was just dazzling. Unfortunately, the rest of the week, they had moved farther and farther apart so the effect was not nearly as impressive, so Monday was the time to catch that astronomical event. On Tuesday morning, our local newspaper had a picture of it on the front page, which looked like it had been taken with someone's cell phone, or worse, and through a dirty window besides. Heck, Bill's pictures beat the pants off that one, and everyone knows that he is not a professional photographer, because he's intent on maintaining his amateur status. But his record speaks for itself, and I've got the moon shots to prove it.
I will admit (albeit under protest) that I am not the world's most organized individual, but I'm a very busy person and I certainly don't have time for trivialities. Last week, I got the most bland and undesirable looking envelope in the mail, and I was just about to toss it unceremoniously into my pile of junk mail for the "someday I'll get around to looking at this stuff" phase of my life that may never come at this rate. It's true that the sender was identified as the United States Postal Service, but the return address was some cockamamie place like 8300 NE Underground Drive, Pillar 210 in Kansas City, which sounds like a bad sketch from the Spy vs. Spy cartoon in MAD magazine, of all things. And it had no postage, just the usual bulk mail notice printed in the corner, so there was really nothing about it to entice me to open this up and see what it was all about. But I figured they might be sending out information about shipping holiday packages or some such helpful hints, so I opened it up after all. You can imagine my shock to find the Christmas stamps that I ordered from their web site, tumbling out of this crummy looking nothing of an envelope, which I nearly threw away, and would never have thought of again, and then wondered why I never got my Christmas stamps. Especially since I've been buying stamps from them online for years and years, and the order always comes in some big and flat official looking mailer with a lot of no-nonsense design elements all over it, so as soon as it comes, you know this is serious. The new way of doing things is not only not serious, but it looks like just about the last thing in the world that you would ever want to open, even if like me, you know that you recently ordered something from them. I suppose in the fantasy world where the Postal Service lives, every single piece of everything that comes into the house gets opened by someone, but I can tell them that I'm certainly not living in that world, at least not anymore, and I need mail that does a little better job of getting my attention, if it's something important. Especially if they're sending it to me from an underground pillar, for heaven's sake.
Speaking of heaven, alert readers may be wondering about the beloved annual ritual of Lessons & Carols at church, particularly in light of our Music Director retiring at the end of the year to spend more time with her family. Far from giving up the seasonal celebration as a lost cause, she actually started rehearsals in September, so all of the senior choir, the youth, the music school students, soloists and bell ringers could be prepared to pull out all the stops, close out her career on a high note and go out with a bang. This time around, we're taking a break from torturing poor Georg Friedrich Handel, may he rest in peace, and not rendering his exquisite For Unto Us A Child Is Born into some unrecognizable caterwauling like we usually do. In its place, we'll be tackling Laudamus Te from Vivaldi's Gloria, that is, unless the Vivaldi Anti-Desecration League gets wind of it first and burns the church down to protect their hero's masterpiece from the likes of us inept amateurs. On the other hand, we'll be performing it in English, and it's possible that no one would recognize it for what it really is, at least not the way we do it, so I suppose we have that in our favor.
In spite of her best efforts, it may be possible that not everybody in the world knows that my sister Linda is going to New Zealand and Australia for three months, beginning in January. I guess you could say that this is someone that retirement agrees with, and that's putting it mildly. Because of weight restrictions on a lot of the connections between different stops, she needed to pack light accordingly right from the start. One leg of the journey has a 15 pound maximum for luggage, so that set the limit for the entire trip, because it won't be possible to leave any extra weight luggage along the way and retrieve it later. She weighs everything she wants to take with her (like her new Asus 1000 laptop, which is ultra portable without being too small to use) to stay under the 15 pound limit. I have to give her a lot of credit, because it occurred to me that I pack more than 15 pounds of stuff to stay overnight in a hotel that's only 20 minutes from my house, so obviously my chances of international travel have no hope of success, unless I buy a couple of extra seats just for my luggage. Of course, some enterprising innovator could invent Heavyweight Airlines, for those of us who want to trip the light fantastic without packing light to get there, and our patron saint would certainly not be Holly Go Lightly from "Breakfast at Tiffany's," that's for sure. Obviously, I would be the poster child for this new "travel heavy" initiative, so if you hear of anything, please don't leave me in the dark, because I'm not really afraid of the light. (Oof!)
Happy December! We seem to have finally turned the corner into winter in the local area (although technically, the actual Winter Solstice is not for another couple of weeks yet) and it's gotten much colder, and pretty darned quick besides. I remember one Saturday a few weeks ago, when the weather reports were predicting frost and overnight lows below freezing, and I hurried out and put the bird bath heaters in both bird baths lickety-split, and glad to get this done before they both froze solid. This had the effect of making the temperature go up 20 degrees overnight, so that by Sunday morning, I couldn't help but wonder what all the fuss was about. But last weekend, we had snow flurries (when it was still November) and the temperature has really dropped so that even when the sun is out, you can still tell it's December, and no joke. Why, at this rate, people are bound to stop wearing flip-flops any day now.
This coming Sunday, we should be lighting the second candle on our Advent wreaths, so the time is flying for anyone who may not be completely prepared for the gift-giving occasions of their choice coming up. At our house, the Advent Anthem Brigade (who shall remain nameless, but looks suspiciously like me) was not at the top of its game on Sunday, so we wound up lighting the wreath on Monday instead, opting for quality over timeliness. (Although it must be said that the perception of quality is judged solely on a subjective basis, which may actually have no foundation in reality, and I ought to know.) One reason that the Advent Anthem Brigade was woefully unprepared for its moment in the spotlight on Sunday, and on time as it should have been, was that it was busy instead putting up Christmas lights around the place, upstairs and downstairs, inside and out. We got some new lights for this year, along with the old tried and true, so it looked pretty festive when it was all said and done, and as for visions of sugarplums dancing, well, it goes without saying.
While we're on the subject of lights, we get the following story from Bill, when the overhead lights blew out where he works:
=====================================
As for the stupid lights, they're still out. Luckily, Danny recommended an electrician he knew who is, understandably, equally as reliable as Danny is. This guy showed up 2 hours after Tommy put in his 'EMERGENCY" call. When he walked in -- into the dark room -- he said "So, what's the problem?"
=====================================
And now for the local area gasoline report, courtesy of our friendly neighborhood Sunoco station down the block. Of course, everyone realizes that gas prices would continue to plummet, especially since I went ahead and got gas last week, and in fact, there was a note on the AOL Welcome screen recently that said gas prices were the lowest they've been in 3 years, and I don't doubt it. At the Sunoco, I had been watching the price of regular come down all week, until it finally reached $2.09 when I came home from work this afternoon, from $2.11 yesterday, and even I was surprised at that. But when Bill and I drove past it later on the way home after dinner, it had gone down again, to $2.07, just since the time that I left work! This kind of thing just has to make you shake your head and wonder, because there's something about this that is just not right, and that's not just John D. Rockefeller talking, believe me.
In other news, if you missed the night sky on Monday of this week, you really missed a show that was worth seeing. I came home from work and said right to Bill that he needed to go straight to a window and look out, immediately if not sooner. He replied that he didn't need to do that, because he had already seen it, and in fact, even took pictures of it, because it was so spectacular. All in one spot and bright as anything, there was a perfect sliver of the moon, plus Venus and Jupiter to the side. Bill said it looked just like the flag of Turkey, and it certainly did. It was really a sight to behold, and the three of them so close together was just dazzling. Unfortunately, the rest of the week, they had moved farther and farther apart so the effect was not nearly as impressive, so Monday was the time to catch that astronomical event. On Tuesday morning, our local newspaper had a picture of it on the front page, which looked like it had been taken with someone's cell phone, or worse, and through a dirty window besides. Heck, Bill's pictures beat the pants off that one, and everyone knows that he is not a professional photographer, because he's intent on maintaining his amateur status. But his record speaks for itself, and I've got the moon shots to prove it.
I will admit (albeit under protest) that I am not the world's most organized individual, but I'm a very busy person and I certainly don't have time for trivialities. Last week, I got the most bland and undesirable looking envelope in the mail, and I was just about to toss it unceremoniously into my pile of junk mail for the "someday I'll get around to looking at this stuff" phase of my life that may never come at this rate. It's true that the sender was identified as the United States Postal Service, but the return address was some cockamamie place like 8300 NE Underground Drive, Pillar 210 in Kansas City, which sounds like a bad sketch from the Spy vs. Spy cartoon in MAD magazine, of all things. And it had no postage, just the usual bulk mail notice printed in the corner, so there was really nothing about it to entice me to open this up and see what it was all about. But I figured they might be sending out information about shipping holiday packages or some such helpful hints, so I opened it up after all. You can imagine my shock to find the Christmas stamps that I ordered from their web site, tumbling out of this crummy looking nothing of an envelope, which I nearly threw away, and would never have thought of again, and then wondered why I never got my Christmas stamps. Especially since I've been buying stamps from them online for years and years, and the order always comes in some big and flat official looking mailer with a lot of no-nonsense design elements all over it, so as soon as it comes, you know this is serious. The new way of doing things is not only not serious, but it looks like just about the last thing in the world that you would ever want to open, even if like me, you know that you recently ordered something from them. I suppose in the fantasy world where the Postal Service lives, every single piece of everything that comes into the house gets opened by someone, but I can tell them that I'm certainly not living in that world, at least not anymore, and I need mail that does a little better job of getting my attention, if it's something important. Especially if they're sending it to me from an underground pillar, for heaven's sake.
Speaking of heaven, alert readers may be wondering about the beloved annual ritual of Lessons & Carols at church, particularly in light of our Music Director retiring at the end of the year to spend more time with her family. Far from giving up the seasonal celebration as a lost cause, she actually started rehearsals in September, so all of the senior choir, the youth, the music school students, soloists and bell ringers could be prepared to pull out all the stops, close out her career on a high note and go out with a bang. This time around, we're taking a break from torturing poor Georg Friedrich Handel, may he rest in peace, and not rendering his exquisite For Unto Us A Child Is Born into some unrecognizable caterwauling like we usually do. In its place, we'll be tackling Laudamus Te from Vivaldi's Gloria, that is, unless the Vivaldi Anti-Desecration League gets wind of it first and burns the church down to protect their hero's masterpiece from the likes of us inept amateurs. On the other hand, we'll be performing it in English, and it's possible that no one would recognize it for what it really is, at least not the way we do it, so I suppose we have that in our favor.
In spite of her best efforts, it may be possible that not everybody in the world knows that my sister Linda is going to New Zealand and Australia for three months, beginning in January. I guess you could say that this is someone that retirement agrees with, and that's putting it mildly. Because of weight restrictions on a lot of the connections between different stops, she needed to pack light accordingly right from the start. One leg of the journey has a 15 pound maximum for luggage, so that set the limit for the entire trip, because it won't be possible to leave any extra weight luggage along the way and retrieve it later. She weighs everything she wants to take with her (like her new Asus 1000 laptop, which is ultra portable without being too small to use) to stay under the 15 pound limit. I have to give her a lot of credit, because it occurred to me that I pack more than 15 pounds of stuff to stay overnight in a hotel that's only 20 minutes from my house, so obviously my chances of international travel have no hope of success, unless I buy a couple of extra seats just for my luggage. Of course, some enterprising innovator could invent Heavyweight Airlines, for those of us who want to trip the light fantastic without packing light to get there, and our patron saint would certainly not be Holly Go Lightly from "Breakfast at Tiffany's," that's for sure. Obviously, I would be the poster child for this new "travel heavy" initiative, so if you hear of anything, please don't leave me in the dark, because I'm not really afraid of the light. (Oof!)
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 8:54 PM
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