Intentionally Unexpected
I got out of bed this morning and walked over to the window. After peeking through the blinds for a moment I said “huh”.
Bevin, still in bed, says “what, is it snowing or something?”
Actually yes. Apparently my “huh” communicated how perplexed I was quite clearly, and she tried to guess the most perplexing thing I might see out the window.
The screaming children we can hear were a clue too she says.
As a reminder, it was 70 degrees out yesterday.
Huh.
It certainly LOOKS like January outside.
But it’s 72 degrees. A nice comfortable warm mugginess.
My brain just doesn’t know what to do with this.
7:30am on New Years Eve and the fireworks stands are open. (the stands are there year round)
I expect this means it will be an eventful evening.
There is one stand, the largest around, barn really, which is not open. They have sign out front reading “City of Roanoke forced us to close! Stand up to municipal tyranny!”
Perhaps they shall be the Alamo of fireworks and it’ll be an extra exciting evening!
It wasn’t until while re-packing my backpack AFTER going through security that I realized my rain jacket isn’t in the bottom of it where it usually is.
I hear it’s a bit damp up PNW way these days. Oh well, not like I’ve never been damp before. 😂
It’s 6pm, it’s dark out, we can see stars, it’s 70 degrees. It’s the middle of December.
Sometimes this place just feels weird.
In all the years Bev and I have lived together we never set up a proper Christmas tree. Didn’t have room for it, didn’t have room to store it, and were going to be at our parents’ places where they had trees anyway. We always put up a tiny twig of some kind in homage to Charlie Brown, but that’s about it. Not this year though! Behold!
We received a Christmas Tree from some friends who were moving shortly after we arrived here in Texas. Both Bev and I are big “real tree” people, but we have this, well, frankly GIANT house, and we figured we’d probably need at LEAST 2 trees eventually. (This year though this is our only one, and it’s got ALL our ornaments on it and isn’t quite full, so we’re not there yet!)
Boy were we right! The tree we got works perfectly in our, I believe the builder calls it, “rotunda”. Quite nice, since it’s a taller skinnier tree and fits perfectly without obstructing any movement!
Most of the ornaments on the tree are mine, including my favorite train engine, and many other train engines. Fortunately most of them have a year written on them so I have some sort of idea why they were given to me. “Grandchild’s first christmas ornament” from Hallmark is on here, although to be fair I’m not sure which set of grandparents that one is from. More extensive documentation may be required.
When I was young and my family went to Florida to visit my great grandparents we got a christmas ornament for every year we were there, and Bev and I have kept it up with out 2015 and 2018 Disney ornaments, pictured here. Also on the tree is an ornament for Vienna! The traditions must be maintained! (To which end, yes, there’s a pickle on there somewhere!)
The tree does need a bit more work though, gotta find a nice skirt for the bottom of it, and we desperately need a Texas ornament, possibly a Texas star tree topper of some kind. It’s only right. 🙂
We also did a little visible-from-the-outside decoration, the front yard tree and a tiny tree in the window above the garage:
All in all it feels quite festive! The living room has some nice greenery going on, although not really a traditional Christmas tree:
Unfortunately I think we’ve been beaten by the neighbors in terms of outside decorations:
Yes, that’s the Grinch, stealing the lights off their house. Brilliant!
This restaurant parking lot has a biker club, and horses.
Bevin says: “this is that I wanted out of Texas!”
Trying a coffee place today. Bev’s (left) is coffee soda with ginger, and a carrot cake whipped cream. Mine is the “moth man” with some sort of condensed milk and activated charcoal.
This coffee shop is near the big college, is an “ale works” as well as coffee shop, has a bunch of trestle tables, and a big wall board games, and behind Bevin you can see some classic arcade consoles. Neat spot! I’ll bring some quarters next time and get my Galaga on.
I’ve just scared my first tiny trick or treaters.
I’ve got the lights on spooky flickering, the Haunted Mansion queue music in playing on the speakers, and I’m acting like a Ghost Host and trying to work in as many terrible puns as possible.
I amuse myself.
What makes a Twix “left” vs “right”?
I cut them open with a knife, they’re identical, so there goes my only idea. (I had hoped for a symmetry of some kind…)
So now I’m just puzzled.
Bevin was pleased though, when she discovered bite size snickers could be used for spelling.
An another note, I re-arranged some plants to keep things away from the windows a bit as it starts to get pretty cold. I really like how this turned out:
You can’t quite see, but one of the plants is getting ready to unfurl a bunch of new leaves. I’ll turn this place into a jungle eventually!