Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I hope that 2013 brings you all nothing but the very best for you and your families, and that all of your hopes and dreams are fulfilled.

I love celebrating the new year... It is always a good time for me to go out to the desert or up into the mountains and build a nice big fire, or out to my folks' place and reflect back on the past year, sort of get rid of whatever bad things happened, embrace the good things that happened, and think about the positive things that I hope the coming year will bring.

I cannot recall that I have ever gone "out" on New Years Eve since I was at University. Not my deal at all... far too many drunks on the road. And with that being said, you all be careful and PLEASE have a designated driver if you all go out for the holiday.

CHEERS!
MCR

We have been invited to a New Years' Eve party that we have been to many times before. This guy's house is decorated very well for Christmas... so much so, that he had to add additional breaker panels for the outdoor lights. Then, he gets cases and cases of "finale" fireworks and glues them to boards and wires them together. He lays out strings of 10,000 firecrackers, has over a hundred mortars, and lights it right after his lit ball drop at midnight. Pics below (well, when I can post them). It looks like servimg.com is down... hopefully it'll be up soon.

This link is from my web site. It shows you how he does things... a pic of his house.

Finales:


Mortars:

WOW, that is QUITE a show, EE!! I'll be looking forward to seeing the rest of your pictures. Please do be careful out there, and call a cab if necessary.

This was a very nice post from about a year ago.

Writlarge wrote:

This was a very nice post from about a year ago.

Aww, thanks Writ . See?? I can be nice! ...when I wanna be! :-P

And it's about that time again, isn't it?? Wow, things in my life have changed a bunch since last year. Life is good.

Glad life is good for you Ricey. You Eskimo.

Good and COLD!

I was talking to Az today and she said, "Damn, I don't know how you can stand the cold."

I told her, "It ain't bad. Hell, I don't know how you can stand the HEAT!" And we both laughed.

riceme wrote:

I was talking to Az today and she said, "Damn, I don't know how you can stand the cold."

I told her, "It ain't bad. Hell, I don't know how you can stand the HEAT!" And we both laughed.

Wait...Az laughed?

She is hilarious... you must not know her very well . Bummer for you, Writty.

riceme wrote:

She is hilarious... you must not know her very well . Bummer for you, Writty.

Well Ricey, I don't know her at all, but I was just kidding. I've heard that people from Alaska have extremely short fuses. 

Everybody should have a little Az in their life . She is a gem.

Huh... I have not seen that at all but it wouldn't surprise me in wintertime when there's no sunlight. It can make you a little crazy and people do get cabin fever.

A while after I got here I told my cousin's wife that it seemed like you needed to have a good sense of humor to be able to live here. She agreed with me and added, "Well yeah... That and you need to be at LEAST half crazy."

Happy Holidays to you Riceme and all here!

My Daughter got me started on a little ritual last year which I found fun.

Keep a happy jar and whenever you find yourself happy drop a note in it.

Keep a regret jar and do the same.

On NYE burn all the regrets so that they are left behind and read all the happies.

Ha...good thread....


Reminds me...I have an OCD friend who puts up her Christmas tree and lights about two weeks before Thanksgiving. Every year I tell her she is about 320 days late. Putting it in that context makes her seriously nuts!

She also removes them Christmas afternoon, to which I respond...How come the Valentine's Day decorations aren't up yet?

Good to have neighbors like me who will do her best to put your neurosis into overdrive .

I left my outdoor lights on the house last year. All I had to do was plug 'em in.

They're rather unobtrusive, though. Plastic tubes with LEDs inside. You can't hardly see 'em when they're off.

My cousin's wife has teensy LED Christmas lights wrapped around the logs on her front and back porches because she cannot decide on light fixtures to "go" with the cabin, lol. They're on some sort of a timer... or something that detects daylight / nighttime, but they stay up year-round at this point, lol.

SheSurfs wrote:

Ha...good thread....


Reminds me...I have an OCD friend who puts up her Christmas tree and lights about two weeks before Thanksgiving. Every year I tell her she is about 320 days late. Putting it in that context makes her seriously nuts!

She also removes them Christmas afternoon, to which I respond...How come the Valentine's Day decorations aren't up yet?

Good to have neighbors like me who will do her best to put your neurosis into overdrive .

LOL- We put ours up about two weeks before Thanksgiving this year too, but then Thanksgiving came late in the month this year. At least for a week and a half I had the best Christmas decorations on the street. Once the neighbors started putting theirs up that all ended.
When my brother came over for Thanksgiving day he asked if we had had the tree up all year. I thought he was being sarcastic but he told me they keep theirs up all year and decorate it for whatever season they are in.
I told him I thought only Hobby Lobby did that.

The house I talked about (fireworks guy) won some kind of "spirit" award for having the best lights in Alabama. This is the kind of place that is in the newspaper's "don't miss" list each year. Before he added extra power panels to the side of his house, his wife told me she couldn't run her hair dryer without blowing a circuit breaker!

Here's a YouTube video I took from a cell phone this year. This display goes on like this for almost 20 minutes. Missing is the usual sound of constant crackling of firecrackers. I must have made this near the end of the display when the firecrackers had all popped. Afterwards, the neighbors get together early in the morning (daylight) and sweep up all the debris out of the street.