I like winter more than I like spring. I love autumn most, but that’s for another post. Check the archives.
When the days get shorter and the nights get longer, it feels natural. The quality of the light also is comforting. When the days get longer and the nights shorter, it is discomforting, and the quality of light is artificial.
From here on out, it will be an unnerving day to day existence until the awesomeness of summer.
I’m sitting at home waiting for the right time to head on over to the post office to pick up a package. I wish they would open at 8 am rather than a half hour later. I have to stay at work later than I would want to just because of the opening time.
In this day and age, the US postal service is a throwback to earlier times when letters were all important. Now, it’s just email, text, or IM. When will it be e-packages, text-packages, or IM-packages? Send my figures to my 3D printer so that I don’t have to wait so long.
Anywhoo, with the holiday coming up (9 days of shopping left), you better mail out those packages if you need them to get to their destination before Christmas morn.
“The worst thing that ever happened to me was on Christmas. Oh, God. It was so horrible. It was Christmas Eve.
I was 9 years old. Me and Mom were decorating the tree, waiting for Dad to come home from work. A couple hours went by. Dad wasn’t home. So Mom called the office. No answer. Christmas Day came and went, and still nothing. So the police began a search.
Four or five days went by. Neither one of us could eat or sleep. Everything was falling apart. It was snowing outside. The house was freezing, so I went to try to light up the fire.
That’s when I noticed the smell. The firemen came and broke through the chimney top. And me and Mom were expecting them to pull out a dead cat or a bird. And instead they pulled out my father. He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit. He’d been climbing down the chimney… his arms loaded with presents. He was gonna surprise us. He slipped and broke his neck. He died instantly.
And that’s how I found out there was no Santa Claus.”
Kate (Phoebe Cates), Gremlins
“Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London, even including—which is a bold word—the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley, since his last mention of his seven years’ dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change—not a knocker, but Marley’s face.”
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
santa’s little helpers
Originally uploaded by rockymountainroz.
Dolls. They scare me. O_o
Happy Halloween! Oops. I mean Xmas!
Tick. Tock.
“Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
Is the Vince Guaraldi soundtrack to the Charlie Brown Christmas Special the definitive music for the holiday season?
Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his
head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold;
cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight;
Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious!
Glorious!“What’s to-day!” cried Scrooge, calling downward to a
boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look
about him.“EH?” returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.
“What’s to-day, my fine fellow?” said Scrooge.
“To-day!” replied the boy. “Why, CHRISTMAS DAY.”
“It’s Christmas Day!” said Scrooge to himself. “I
haven’t missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night.
They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of
course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!”“Hallo!” returned the boy.
“Do you know the Poulterer’s, in the next street but one,
at the corner?” Scrooge inquired.“I should hope I did,” replied the lad.
“An intelligent boy!” said Scrooge. “A remarkable boy!
Do you know whether they’ve sold the prize Turkey that
was hanging up there?–Not the little prize Turkey: the
big one?”“What, the one as big as me?” returned the boy.
“What a delightful boy!” said Scrooge. “It’s a pleasure
to talk to him. Yes, my buck!”“It’s hanging there now,” replied the boy.
“Is it?” said Scrooge. “Go and buy it.”
“Walk-ER!” exclaimed the boy.
“No, no,” said Scrooge, “I am in earnest. Go and buy
it, and tell ’em to bring it here, that I may give them the
direction where to take it. Come back with the man, and
I’ll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than
five minutes and I’ll give you half-a-crown!”The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady
hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast.“I’ll send it to Bob Cratchit’s!” whispered Scrooge,
rubbing his hands, and splitting with a laugh. “He sha’n’t
know who sends it. It’s twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe
Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob’s
will be!”
Eat, drink and enjoy this wonderful day. Go to church if you believe. And even if you don’t.
God, bless us, everyone!
Another excerpt from everyone’s favorite Christmas Carol
He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young
girl in a mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears,
which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of
Christmas Past.“It matters little,” she said, softly. “To you, very little.
Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort
you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have
no just cause to grieve.”“What Idol has displaced you?” he rejoined.
“A golden one.”
“This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” he said.
“There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and
there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity
as the pursuit of wealth!”“You fear the world too much,” she answered, gently.
“All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being
beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your
nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion,
Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?”“What then?” he retorted. “Even if I have grown so
much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you.”She shook her head.
“Am I?”
“Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were
both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could
improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You
are changed. When it was made, you were another man.”“I was a boy,” he said impatiently.
“Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you
are,” she returned. “I am. That which promised happiness
when we were one in heart, is fraught with misery now that
we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of
this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it,
and can release you.”“Have I ever sought release?”
“In words. No. Never.”
“In what, then?”
“In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another
atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In
everything that made my love of any worth or value in your
sight. If this had never been between us,” said the girl,
looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; “tell me,
would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!”He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in
spite of himself. But he said with a struggle, “You think
not.”“I would gladly think otherwise if I could,” she answered,
“Heaven knows! When I have learned a Truth like this,
I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you
were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe
that you would choose a dowerless girl–you who, in your
very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain: or,
choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your
one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your
repentance and regret would surely follow? I do; and I
release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you
once were.”He was about to speak; but with her head turned from
him, she resumed.“You may–the memory of what is past half makes me
hope you will–have pain in this. A very, very brief time,
and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an
unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that you
awoke. May you be happy in the life you have chosen!”She left him, and they parted.
Don’t be like Scrooge. Find yourself a girl and settle down.
