On the First Day of December

The day began with Elliott's basketball practice which went pretty well. His team is scrimmaging pretty good and working on the fundamentals. Their first game is December 13.

After that, we started in on the Christmas decorations set up. Much like egg nog, it doesn't take but a little bit to remind me why I don't like it. I pulled out the lights for the tree and the outside bushes and icicles and started the bulb replacement process. A string of bulbs costs like $5 at WalMart and every year I say it would be a better use of my time to just throw out the strings every year and buy new ones. But I cannibalized a couple of old strings for the bulbs and got everything working fine. Dragged everything outside and started the install. The icicles went up fine and the net bushes went on pretty quickly too. Elliott came out and we put some lights on our new little tree and set up some lawn decorations that look like giant, lighted presents. The wind was whipping cold but it went pretty smoothly. Turned on the switch and found a bunch of lights out! So now I replace more bulbs but this time out in the cold. We have been watching a documentary on people climbing on Mt. Everest and one of the lines on the show is, 'lose a glove, lose a hand.' I tried to keep my gloves on due to the cold but that didn't last long. By now, it was dark outside and we were able to adjust the net bushes for maximum effect. Looked good. For about 10 minutes. Then one of the tiny fuses in the plugs blew out. Took me about 10 minutes and a Chilton's manual to figure out how to open the little door in the string plug to replace that. Finally I got it and popped a new fuse in. Looked pretty good.

Lucie had made us hot chocolate and was working inside the house on the tree. Meanwhile, the new crock pot I got her for her birthday was simmering away making a big stew. So Elliott and I went in and started fluffing the tree limbs for Lucie. She would stick them on the tree and rig the lights at the same time. And rig she did. Typically we have about 5 or 6 strings of lights for the whole tree. I get the dual colored ones - each bulb has two colors so that really lights things up. She was about halfway done and had used 8 strings! Off to WalMart she went to get some more. By the time we were done, 14 strings were run through the tree. I found I could turn the furnace off and we were all warm enough from the light of the tree. It looked really good though. Except for the top - there was an unspoken rule that no one was eating until the tree was done so I ran one string of lights around the top of the tree and headed for the kitchen. Then all of the tree lights went out. I learned from my net lights experience what the problem was and replaced a fuse in one string of lights and all was good again. Ashleigh started vacuuming up the needles that had fallen off onto the carpet and managed to suck the main power cord to the tree up into the vacuum. I fished that out but it was looking a bit rough so we had to replace that. Which meant disconnecting all the tree lights and attaching them to the replacement power cord. That was proabably a good thing because this time we broke up the strings and attached them to the power cord outlets evenly (instead of stringing them all together with just one plug).

Lucie and I went out to the yard to survey our handiwork. The tree is in a front window and we keep those shades open so people going by can see the tree. Looked good. Then the net lights fuse blew again... So this morning I ran another power cord out there and split up the strings like we did the tree. Finally we settled down and watched the movie, "Kicking and Screaming." That was pretty funny. What was not so funny was that we had rented it from Netflix and it was on regular (free) TV at the same time...

Tonight is the church kid's play so Lucie and the kids will be there getting ready for that all day. A friend of mine bought our old treadmill so he is coming over to get that this afternoon. They predicted icy rain all day and so far nothing. Which is good.