The Real Thing

Last night was the real Light Tour before the Master’s Miata Club’s Holiday Party. On the way over to the meeting place we drove right by one of the houses and, gasp, it wasn’t lit up. Turned out that one other house on the abbreviated tour was dark as well, but neither was an issue because we skipped going by house number one and the second one was right next door to one was blazing in full glory. As with most Club gatherings everyone had a great time chatting and just hanging out. I was worried about time, but didn’t have to be because as I guessed we didn’t get going until well after the appointed start time.

There was plentiful and varied party food stuffs, but as always the highlight of the evening is the gift swap. The poor person who drew number 17, who was seated next to us, had barely finished opening his package before my wife, #18, claimed it from him. She liked the silver painted wire reindeer, the container of cashews included didn’t hurt either. I was #27 and when my turn came I snagged a eclectic Christmas tree looking decoration. I’m sure the poor fellow, who was like #3, was sure he was stuck with the thing. But both Donna and I found it intriguing, so I took it from him. He picked another gift and it worked out well for him, but only for a short time. He unwrapped a really nice clock that looked like a car wheel, I think the next person up took it right out of hands, sending him back under the tree.

Christmas MP3 CD

I could have sworn I made up a CD full of Christmas music in MP3 form last year, but can’t seem to find it. I guess I’ll have to make another one up. It should be easy as I’ve got 341 Christmas songs taking up 1.2Gig on my hard drive. I usually buy CDs that are a little out there because I can hear all the usual stuff on the radio, so not all of those songs are gems. A A Big Band Christmas nets a couple of keepers, ditto Cajun Christmas and Hillbilly Holiday. On the other hand, on Bummed Out Christmas, Just In Time For Christmas and The Best Of Cool Yule every song is a gem. I can’t really explain having purchased Another Rosie Christmas at all. I’m sure I can get 700 Megs worth to cram on a CD. For in the car listening, that should last me to Christmas.

Dry Run #3

From the Sno-Cap, doing just the North Augusta lights and ending up at the party house it takes 30 minutes. And that includes two wrong turns. We then went back to the Sno Cap and headed into the big city of Augusta to do that downtown loop to see if it would be around 15 minutes. It took 30 minutes and that was eliminating a small loop that only had two houses on it. So we have agreed that we will just hang out longer at the Cap and do the sort tour. As Donna said, “When the heck has this group ever left on time anyway.”

Speed Lighting

In my house it is the job of the man to erect the tree and string the lights. The female is then free to complete the more delicate task of hanging ornaments. For the past ten years or so we have had an artificial tree, so my job consists of putting the 3 pieces together and then carefully fluffing up the 300 compressed tips into something that resembles natural branches.

The fake tree costs less and after 5 years of use, it is free in comparison to the real ones. You don’t have to shop several place to find the right tree because it is always the right size and shape. It is better for the environment, plus you don’t have the sap of innocent trees on your hands. The only downside is no fresh pine scent. This is overcome by hanging, intermingled with the ornaments, a dozen or so of those pine tree car air-fresheners usually hung from rearview mirrors of Camaros.*

Here is a tip that will make your tree lighting chores zip on by. This year it took all of five minutes to hang the lights on my tree. I no longer dance around it in circles as if it were a maypole, trying to get the strings of lights evenly distributed. Thanks go to co-worker, James Stanley, for this brilliant idea. Wrap your tree in those mesh lights designed for your outside shrubbery. For our 7′ tall tree we needed two of those 4′ x 6′ 150 light meshes. Here is a picture of the tree, apologies, as it seems the auto focus doesn’t work too well in the dark. Anyway I think it kinda looks cool in an abstract way.

*Just kidding about the air fresheners, for the past several years my boss’s boss has given everyone in the department a fresh pine wreath. We place ours on the inside of the front door.

New Background

Came via email today. Something with the title of “If Men Designed Xmas Wrapping Paper.” I think it is very festive. Tune in tomorrow to see if my wife makes me take it down. And if she thinks this one is not suitable for internet viewing, she should see the other one. Has that piqued your interest? Leave a comment and I’ll email you a copy of the other one.

Dream On

Just saw a commercial for the new Buick LaCrosse with the background song of Aerosmith’s “Dream On.” Good song, IMHO much better than their more current work, I can only hope that the same is true for Buick. Some how though I can’t imagine that that car will be the car of anyone’s dream.

This is not the first time Buick’s advertising has dipped into the classic rock bag of tricks to try and sell cars. I don’t know how many more Rendezvous they sold because of the pairing of that SUV with Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein”, but I thought the song was dead (no pun intended) on right for the vehicle. It looked like it was made various parts of other cars and pieced together to form a whole vehicle, but it wasn’t cohesive.

Dry Run #2

After supper we piled in to the MSV and checked out the North Augusta houses that were listed in previous Augusta Chronicle light tours. It was good and bad news. We had some new gems, some old gems, some new disappointments and some old shadows of their former selves. Seeing as I have the tour time as only 45 minutes in the newsletter we may be able to just get by with the stuff in North Augusta. The NA places might be enough and they are right on the way to the party house. I hate to eliminate some of the Augusta houses because there were a few winners over in Georgia, but it seems so far away. It is not really that far, but maybe it is just the psychological barrier of crossing the river or maybe it is just that North Augusta is suburbia and Augusta kind of inner city like.

We are going to make a timed run on Friday from the start, by all the North Augusta homes and end up at the house where the party is. If it is close to 45 minutes, that will be it. Not sure what happens if it comes up 10 minutes short. We may have to venture into the big city.