Christmas time

Well, we are almost there at Christmas and so we thought it was just about time to put up the Christmas decorations at home over the weekend. The tree looks pretty darn good even if I do say so myself and it only took 5 sets of lights to light the whole thing! Amazing. Speaking of decorating I saw, but resisted the most awesome ornament:


Putting decorations up is usually a pretty simple task for me except when it comes to lighting the tree and putting up the ornaments. When I put the ornaments I am always overwhelmed by the amount of branches and seem to end up putting six ornaments on the same branch without realizing. Or I constantly pass up the "good branch" thinking that there will be a better or heavier ornament that needs it. It's usually takes a good hour to get the thing complete. With the lights I usually do a pretty good job despite being two feet shorter than the top of the tree and not being to reach around it without getting a face full of needles. In fact, most of the time I'm putting up the tree lights, or lights outside the house I look like Doc Brown from Back to the Future:
Never mind. All done for this year!

Perspective is all relative

Einstein made famous the notion of time being relative. The example I think he used goes something like: 5 minutes can seem to pass quickly when you are in the arms of your lover but would seem like a lifetime when you are sitting on a hot stove. It make a lot of sense to me and makes me think about how my perspective on other things in life can change in an instant. For example, before we adopted the kittens I would browse the list on pet finder just looking for interests sake rather than looking for a pet. At that point in time it would feel like none of the pets would ever find a home. I felt sad looking at the long list of great pets that have to live in the cramped and crappy conditions of the shelter.

The perspective can quickly change when you suddenly are looking to adopt. Then your thinking changes to "I better get down to the shelter before someone else gets there and adopts the cat I want!" as if people are streaming down to the shelter adopting left, right and center. Isn't that strange?

I think it's part of the reason Ebay has been so successful too, especially for folks like me. When it's something I don't want to buy I scoff at other user's wondering what they were thinking trying to sell THAT. When it's an item I really want I'm desperate to procure it, imagining that in a warehouse somewhere in the hills there are 10,000 computers and 10,000 operators all logging into Ebay to purposefully outbid me on a PC-CDROM version of Blade Runner from 1997 and so I must log on 10 billion times a day in order to outbid the unseen masses.

What's worst is that advertisers and retailers know this. They are master manipulators of our strings causing us to spend thousands on stuff we didn't really want but thought we had to get before they all sold out. Look for this especially at Christmas time when mysterious articles appear in the press announcing the "must-have" toy for Christmas long before it is actually "must-have".

Checked out till Christmas

Is it just because I'm not used to Thanksgiving "holiday" or does it always completely sap any energy left for working? It's Sunday evening now after the holiday and I'm frankly just ready to put my feet up...or rather keep my feet up till Christmas and maybe intersperse that with a few trips to CV for some stocking stuffers. There is at least full three weeks of work to get through so I need to buck it up and get my head down and hopefully I'll find the strength and determination as my alarm springs into life tomorrow morning.

In the meantime "Sunday Evening Allclick" will keep his feet up and let "Monday Morning Allclick" deal with the motivation problem.

Reaching out

It's nearly Christmas. That's right. I said it. I know this as Wal-mart is currently playing Christmas music. I can usually rely on Wal-mart to tell me what time of year it is and have disposed of my calendar. Christmas is no longer a one day event but a huge 60 day on going affair of celebration and "spend"-ery. As it will soon be Christmas, it's time to start thinking about buying gifts and sending cards to people you know. This process is usually straight forward. I just buy things for people in my direct circle of contact or my closest family members. I decided to reach a little further out of my zone this year and get in contact with old friends and send them a card too but it was a difficult decision to make. I began writing my first email to a friend and asking for their home address. It may have seemed a little strange as we hadn't been in contact since January 2008 but I thought "what have I got to lose?". As I was writing I was overcome with a feeling. I suppose it was anger or just confusion. I mean, why was *I* the one making all the effort. Why haven't I been contacted for my address? I had to push through this and sent the email.

I figure that perhaps they are saying the same thing and if everyone continues to say and think that then nothing will ever happen. So, I made the first step. This morning I had zero responses in my email. I think I managed to finish three emails so far so I'm "oh" for three right now. But I'll keep my chin up, my upper lip stiff and continue down my list.

Christmas Decorations- My take....

So what's the deal with Christmas decorations? I love everything about Christmas decorations. Looking at other people's houses all lit up, driving past the lights in the park or down the street, decorating the tree and every spare space in the house. It adds a little happiness to the cold and dark and gloomy winters I think. I was decorating my tree last night, picking out the perfect spot for each decoration. And each decoration has a place on the tree. It's a complex mathematical formula deduced by the height and width of the tree, the thickness of it's branches, the weight of the ornament, how pretty it looks and whether or not the cat can reach it from there. I did pause halfway through the decoration thinking to myself "Isn't this a little crazy? Finding a tree that's already chopped down, then driving it home, putting it up in the living room, and then hanging things on it?" I mean how often do we normally decorate nature? We never get our pot plants all dressed up. (That's plants that are in pots....not the other kind).

I shrugged off the feeling though. Decorating a Christmas tree is so ingrained in me it didn't do me any good to think that way.

My favorite decoration has to be the outside snowflake lights. There is something satisfying about putting up outside decorations for all to see. It's kind of like shouting "Hey you! Look what I did to my dwelling! See how great I am! I managed to light up the OUTSIDE of my house, what have you done?? oh...what's that? You created a complete nativity scene, 6 inflatables, two miles of rope lighting, and hired a snow machine with real snow? And those are real reindeer? Do you have a permit for those? oh...you do. But do you have snowflake lights?? ha! Didn't think so! Nice try "buddy"!