The decorating has been completed. We shopped for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinner last week. There are still a few thing to pick up, but nothing big. We're not spending lots of money on presents this year, either: just enough to keep beneath the tree from looking barren.
It does give the cats room to sit under all the greenery, though. Here's a shot of Patty that I think is really precious: it looks as though she is contemplating the wonders of the holiday, when in reality she's considering how that artificial branch will taste when she chews on it. Marcel, being a dozen years old, has no interest in the season at all. When the boxes of decorations came out, he simply made himself scarce until all the hub-bub was over.So I was sitting up here in the office this morning, working on the opening animation for the redesign of my website, when chain saws began growling and screaming. It seems the city's finally getting around to dismantling the uprooted tree that's been leaning against the apartment building across the street.
The sound was really irritating, like a mad dentist working on trolls' teeth. When a second and third saw joined in, it got close to approximating what the hounds of hell might sound like if they formed an a cappella jazz group.
Rather than feeling vexed by this, I realized God had sent this unholy cacophony to get me off my butt and out into the stores, where a good American belongs this time of year if he/she hasn't done his/her bit for holiday consumerism. And, although I went out and purchased a laptop for the studio yesterday, that was a business expense and not a financial sacrifice to the joys of the season.
To mitigate the crass commercial narrative of the next part of this entry, I shall insert photos of holiday cheer here and there. And since recipients of the presents I purchased will most likely be reading this before presents are opened, I cannot divulge which stores, exactly, I shopped at. Suffice it to say that it took me about 15 minutes to find a parking space (which I usurped from an Asian woman in a Mercedes with a suicidal look in her eyes). Once in the first store, it took me approximately 20 minutes to browse and locate the several gifts I had planned to purchase. The actual act of purchasing them was quite another thing altogether.
When I got up to the cashiers at the front of the store, the line looked downright reasonable until I realized that, like Disneyland, this retailer had hidden the line, snaking it through one of the less populous appliance sections. It was another half hour before I actually executed my transaction and moved on to the next venue.
In the second store, it was clear that the their buyers had been overly cautious in their purchasing and stocking decisions, because many of the shelves and racks were stripped absolutely bare. Still, a half hour of browsing netted an approximation of what I had hoped to find. Luckily, I was in the back of the store when I found my last item, because that's where the line started for the cashiers in the front, a good 300 feet down the aisle. Here, too, it was about 30 minutes before making my purchase. The people in this line were very nice, though, and we talked and joked, whiling away the delay.So, here I am, back home. The side streets are still piled with debris from the wind storm earlier this month. When I returned home, the downed tree across the street was gone and so was the work crew; they had moved down the block, clearing the secondary streets before the end of the day.
Steve has asked for some time this evening to wrap packages downstairs. Lord knows I have enough up here to keep me busy. Perhaps I'll get that animation finished this evening.
So, Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukah and Joyous all the other holidays that never get included. I conclude this entry with an encore of the Russian stop-motion animation I found last year. I just love it: Reminds me that Santa/St. Nick/Cinder Claus/Father Christmas did not always look like a Coca-Cola ad.
No comments:
Post a Comment