A lemon tree, a lens, a nephew

Christmas was, as can be expected, a festive affair. And as usual the morning was relaxed but the afternoon and evening were busy. No suprises, except for what was under the tree.

Speaking of trees, my favorite Christmas present (received) was a Meyer lemon tree from my parents. Wish I had a photo of it for you, but I got lazy. It's a cute little thing right now, only a couple of feet high, and it's already got three ripe lemons drooping the branches. I'm eager to pull one of them off and have a taste.

Also got a new lens for the camera- a 50mm ƒ1.8. Not a fancy lens, no, but it's bright and sharp. Already got a ton of a photos with it, like this one of my nephew hiding behind his grandma's shirt:


This has been one of the longest Christmas weeks ever. Many activities and family visits. Quite frankly, I'm glad it's going to be over soon, as I have a bit of a cold and prefer to suffer my miseries in the comfort of my own home. But it's been fun, and I still have almost a week before I have to return to work.

One last note- saw Tim Burton's adaptation of Sweeney Todd yesterday. Really good film, and just as bloody as advertised. Burton has again surprised me again with the breadth of his cinematic capabilities. You could have once considered his style rather niche and gothic (and the subject matter of Todd doesn't dispel that), but between Big Fish and this musical he's shown his talents and taste to be quite sophisticated. I have no frame of reference against the Sondheim stage version or any of the previous literary incarnations, but that's probably a good thing. It's a delightful, and morose little tale.

Feline imagery and Christmas festivities

New photos of the kitties are up. Scroll down to the close-ups and acrobatic leaps.

We're at my parents' house in Washougal for the holidays. Had a wonderful time at Admiral Dave and Tink's Christmas party last night. The wife and I took 2nd and 3rd place in the tournament, respectively, netting us a couple of extra grabs from the present bag.

We brought the kitties down with us on the drive last night. They only mewed for the first hour or so, then settled down and only spoke up when we turned around in our seats to check on them. Then we got a loud, "get me out of this box" meow. Poor things. They seem to be fairly happy now in the two rooms they get to roam at the house here. We're playing with them and giving attention (proof is in the photos; they appear to like their Christmas present, a fishing fly-like cat lure).

The Labors of a Wannabe Santa Claus

Christmas activities have kept me busy lately. Pretty much closed out the Christmas shopping in the past week, almost entirely without stepping foot in a mall. (Technically, I never got into the mall. I used the exterior entrance to REI.) Kept the shopping local and at small boutiques this year. Mostly shops in the Ballard area, but also Pike Place Market downtown. It's quite satisfying to have done our gift-buying by walking up and down a neighborhood street instead of fighting for parking spots at the local consumerporium.

Right now I'm on a break from wrapping up some of the goodies we bought. Came down with a bit of a headache, so this Junior Santa is taking a break.

Our Christmas tree is standing proud and bright. I had to buy some more lights for it, and ended up with a few feet too much, but tucking them down along the trunk works well. I'm happy with the tree now that it's all decorated, but I won't be buying a Grand Fir again (at any price). The branches are stronger than a Douglas Fir, but they're very thick and dense, which made it much harder to string the lights and find space for ornaments.

Tomorrow night the wife and I are going to see The Nutcracker, as performed by the Pacific Northwest Ballet. I'm really only familiar with the music, and I think it's about time I learned the story and saw what the whole thing is about. I'm looking forward to it.

Only two more days left in the work year for me. The Big A shuts down the week between Christmas and New Year's. We're forced to burn some PTO for it, though the company is generous enough with it that everyone usually has enough to spare. We'll be heading down to Portland for the duration to enjoy holiday gatherings with family and friends. The wife is actually on vacation as of tomorrow, and I won't be back at work until the Fourth of January. My brother and his son are coming into town from Japan, and we're going to have them up here for a couple of days after the New Year. Should be fun.

It's less than a week until the big day now. I'm soaking in the music of the season, stuffed with cookies, and that old Christmas Magic is starting to gel. Tough times at work are threatening to drag me down, but once I'm loose on Friday, forget about it. I'll be in Christmas Bliss.

Merry Christmas, folks. Enjoy the season.

Disappointments of the Seasonal Lumberjack

Busy, but uninteresting week. The thirtieth birthday passed by, relatively smoothly. The party was pleasant- people came, talked, and ate. It snowed, which was a first for a birthday in my memory. It stuck but melted by evening. Dad came up for the party, and in the evening we had dinner at Ivar's Salmon House. While we ate we watched the Lake Union Christmas Ships go by.

Birthday brought me Valve's Orange Box. Portal is great, and everything everyone says it is, both good (challenging, funny) and bad (short, bland environments). I played a couple of random-buddy rounds of Team Fortress 2. It feels very much like how I remember the original, and I'm looking forward to getting some friends together to have some good social rounds. Won't be quite the same as TF1 was at college, yelling down the halls at each other between rounds, but the headsets should make up for it.

Today we hunted down our tannenbaum. There are Christmas tree lots all up and down 15th Ave., but I heard that prices for a small tree were upward of $50. I was quite offended at such a high price (as I believe I also was last year), so I declared that we were going to go cut down our own tree, just like we did back in Oregon, where the prices are $10-$20 for u-cut. A quick Google Map search later, we were zipping down to the Trinity Tree Farm, chosen because their web site showed a cute gift shop.

Huge disappointment is all we got. While the farm is at the end of a gravel road and is nowhere near the bulk of urban development, it's still parts of the suburban cluster and not truly in the rural landscape. That is to say, the drive was neither very inspiring nor Christmasy (that being said, downtown Issaquah is quite cute).

Once there, we saw prices that were on par with our neighborhood tree lots- forty freaking dollars for a Douglas fir. Then, to add insult to injury, most of their fields are "closed", so we couldn't even get a Dougy. Our choice was between a $60 Grand fir and a $75 Fraser fir. Having driven 45 minutes to get out to the psuedo-country, I didn't want to go away without actually sawing down a tree. And since I had forgotten to write down directions to the second closest tree farm, we went the cheaper route- only to find the field almost entirely empty, populated by just a few scraggly, skinny trees, looking for all the world like the survivors of a bomb-devastated city wandering the remains of their home and wondering what to do next.

We did manage to find a decent-looking little tree among the remnants, so we severed it from it's roots and hauled it back to the car. Before leaving, we stopped in at the gift shop. The final disappointment of this place was the awful free "apple cider" they offered. It was lukewarm and tasteless.

I probably wouldn't be griping so much if the Christmas tree had been reasonably priced. I wonder... is the prevalence of cheap Christmas trees just an Oregon phenomenon? Was I spoiled by the environs of my youth? Washington has a healthy enough timber industry, too, why aren't trees just as cheap up here?

We brought our overpriced tree hom and I started stringing the lights, but the business of making dinner interrupted. I'm using the method I used last year, but this Grand fir has more sturdy branches than a Douglas and I'm worried that I'm going to run out of bulbs before I get to the top because I'm being too perfectionist about it. Later tonight I'm going to tear the work-in-progress off; I'll start over tomorrow with better expectations.