Tread Lightly

11/9/2003

We live in a community that is predominately Jewish.

Although my son and his Jewish friends "do Christmas" at my house every year, there is one culturial difference that they are all quite thankful for, even if they don't know about it.

They don't do Christmas lights.

That's a good thing, really it is.

I said to my wife earlier this week, "I hope we don't live here next year because I just don't want to do the lights again. Not like this."

She replied, "You know don't you, that you can still live here and not do so many lights?"

Nah

It's a tradition.

It kind of grew, and grew, and then finally it's basically where I like it. I don't try and add another thing in the yard, or more lights, I just try to sculpt a bit with color.

Last night my son and I were putting the finishing touches on the 20 foot plus Evergreen at the side of the house. The neighbor happened to drive up and came over to chat for a minute.

"Hey NSR, I gotta tell ya, when I saw you on the roof Sunday afternoon I almost yelled over "HEY CHEVY, LOOKIN GOOD."

If you don't get that, I suppose you need to rent National Lampoon's Christmas.

But it's not that bad, really.

I mean, last night I drilled a screw into a tennis ball and tied some heavy duty string to it and then tied the end of the string to the lights. I enlisted the boy to heave the ball just over the top of the tree.

I do take pleasure in smokin the neighbor however. The one who came over to chat with us, they are part owners of a monster nursery chain that puts up lights for their customers at Christmas.

They scaled down a couple of years ago.

I'm hovering around a mile of lights, 5,000 bulbs or so, running off of 8 different timers.

Oh... And by the way That is one of the last pictures ever taken with the Nikon CP5700. I fought with Prudence for quite a while today, so much so that I got most of my income tax return done so I would know if I was going to be up a creek come April 15th. It appeared that things just might be ok.

So, what else to do, but chuck Prudence out the 16thfloor window.

Please excuse me now, I've got this big o'l camera book to read, next game is tomorrow night.