Cool Christmas Gift

My niece Isabel drew my name in the Christmas draw this year (I'm from a large family). And I'm very pleased with the gift she came up with.



She visited my various on-line sites and mined photos and logos to create this cool clock. She used my old tag line -- Remarkably self-absorbed. Since 1962. -- as a central theme. Ironically, I had recently accepted Google's suggestion that I link my G+ and Blogger accounts, which required using my G+ profile  which has no tag line, for both. But I added it back to the blog as a description in the header.

So all is well.

'Tis the Season

We decorated our tree this evening. Though it was not a particularly cold evening, we had a roaring fire and a hearty homemade spaghetti dinner to put us in the mood. And we created a Christmas music station on Pandora; Tchaikovsky (snowflake waltz), Wyndham Hill artists, Laurence Juber, and the like.

We have more ornaments than we need, and fewer lights. We have balls made throughout pre-school by and for both of our daughters. We have reindeer made from popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners. We have knit things and glued-on-paper things and hand-made ceramic things (made by very little hands).

There are Giraffe- and flute-themed ornaments for Karen. There are golf- and football-themed ornaments for me.

We have a lot of ornaments.

We generally put our tree up late in the season. But we also keep it up longer. Karen was raised in the Orthodox church that celebrates the religious holiday of Christmas on January 7 (little Christmas).

Every year I grumble that Christmas starts too soon. But when we get to this part of December, this is a holiday I really like.

Christmas Tree? Up.

We chose our Christmas Tree last weekend, out at the Sposato tree farm, near Milton. It's where we've gotten our tree for several years now. It's a nice place and a favorite of lots of local folks. Every time we stop by, we see more people we know.

The girls were busy getting ready for the Nutcracker, so Karen and I made the tree trip. We brought along her sister, Michele, who was in town for the show.

We found this year's tree way off in a far corner of the farm, where few tree-hunters had been and the selection was still wide. Our young friend David pointed us in that direction, and we thank him for it.

David's girlfriend recruited him to appear in the party scene for our nutcracker (a small crowd of adults is always needed to stand around in the background) and I got to know him during rehearsals. Nice kid.

I went back this afternoon to collect the tree. David cut down the tree for me, ran it through the tree-shaker machinery -- to get rid of dead needles and bugs and things -- and baled it. He helped me pop it onto the car and I drove cautiously home.

I set the tree up this afternoon in the corner of the new room. The cats were fascinated.

We'll decorate it tomorrow evening.