Xmas time is coming

On Saturday, I took a trip with some friends north about 1 hour to Waltham, IL. Waltham, IL is a very small town, they don't even have a traffic light.  It is basically a grain elevator (the main part of a majority of these small farm towns), a restaurant, a bar, a bank, and (surprise!) a curling club. The Waltham Curling Club was established in 1884 (yes, eighteen eighty four) and one of the guys in our league is a member of the club. He invited us to come up and play at their facility, an old building with an old vintage feel to it. Here is a picture from the viewing room:

The viewing room is heated, so you can watch the play in comfort. They also have TV monitors that show what is going on in the house on the far end of the ice.  On the other side of the viewing window, it was a brisk 35 degrees on the ice and we were out there for almost 5 hours.  After playing, we went to the restaurant for a nice meal and then headed home. 

On Sunday, Karen and I took a trip to Springfield, IL. We received a post card from an artist that Karen had met at a festival last summer saying that he was closing his gallery.  Closing the gallery would allow him to focus on travelling to art shows instead of trying to spend time at the gallery. All of the work in his gallery was on sale, so we thought it would be worth the 1 hour trip to go see what he had left.  Who doesn't like a sale?  We visited the gallery and ended up coming home with a piece - it is a combination of aluminum, stainless steel and glass. I'll post a picture once I get it hung on the wall.

When we got home from our thanksgiving trip, our entire neighborhood was decorated for Christmas.  We suddenly felt like we were way behind.  Since returning, we have decorated a tree (white pine) and the inside/outside of the house.  If there is one thing we do not have a shortage of, it would be Christmas decorations.  We could decorate a house twice as big as the one we have now.  That being said, we kept it pretty simple, especially outside.  We just put some wreaths on the lights by the garage doors and wrapped the columns with garland and lights.  Once the tree out front grows some, I will probably put lights in it, but it seems dumb to decorate a tiny tree.

Many of my neighbors went above and beyond with the decorations.These people definitely like to decorate, possibly a little too much.  I often wonder if they truly think that what they did looks nice, or if their kids directed the work and they are just doing it to keep the kids happy.  In some instances, I can only hope it is the latter.  This is going to sound a little bahumbug-ish, but when driving around town, I can't decide what I hate the most:

1.  The stupid inflatable stuff people put in their yards, the snow globe being my least favorite.  These things make me want to buy a BB gun  so that I can do the rest of us a favor by putting these things out of commission.
2.  Randomly flashing lights that have no sequence or reason - I'm cool with them if the run from one end of the house and then back or something that makes a little bit of sense.  I do not like the totally random on/off/on flashing of multiple strands. Some old person is going to have a seizure from this.
3.  Mixing colored and white light strands or incandescent and LED at the same time. This theory is so simple, yet it gets violated all the time.  Just pick one and go with it, you can always do something different next year. 
4.  Flat out poor choices/execution of light placement.  For example:  putting just a single strand of lights in a tree that is big enough to have 3 or 4.  Do it right or don't do it.  While I'm on tree annoyances, why do people wrap the trunk of trees with lights but only go up to the first branch and then stopping there?  Are they worried Rudolph is going to run into the tree trunk if Santa decides to land in their yard?

The last two are probably more a function of the designer in me coming out, but (like I already said) if you are going to do it, do it right.  If you have done one of the things listed above, consider this a warning..