{"id":857,"date":"2012-11-25T19:51:18","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T01:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2012\/11\/25\/121125_christmasdecorations\/"},"modified":"2022-04-08T08:26:57","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T13:26:57","slug":"121125_christmasdecorations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2012\/11\/25\/121125_christmasdecorations\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Decorations 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In an unprecedented and probably unrepeatable display of common sense, I decided to no longer venture onto the roof to hang Christmas lights. I&#8217;m going to use a pogo stick.<\/p>\n<p>OK, just kidding. About the pogo stick, not the roof climbing. I feel confident that I could continue to walk around on the roof, untethered, leaning over the eaves to insert those little plastic tabs under the shingles, but why tempt fate? The roof line isn&#8217;t getting any flatter, nor the ground below any softer. But we still need Christmas lights &#8211; we&#8217;ve <i>always<\/i> had Christmas lights &#8211; so I took a different approach this year.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Instead of painstakingly hanging several hundred lights along the eaves, one at a time, I elected to mount them around our windows and brick arches.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Painstakingly.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>One at a time.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Using a hot glue gun.<\/p>\n<p>Several hundred.<\/p>\n<p>So, instead of killing myself, I just killed time. Seems like a reasonable trade-off, doesn&#8217;t it?Actually, I think they turned out pretty well&#8230;appropriately festive without being too gaudy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/xmaslights2012_1.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of Christmas lights\"><\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, while the camera in the iPhone 4s isn&#8217;t a terrific low-light instrument, it still yields a passably pleasing image, and the new Panorama mode is the bees knees.<\/p>\n<p>We also found a sparkly fake Christmas tree in Fort Stockton, reminiscent of those tinsel trees that were so popular back in the swinging Sixties. This one works for us because it&#8217;s, well, flat.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/xmaslights2012_3.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of a tinsel Christmas tree\" hspace=\"3\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/xmaslights2012_2.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of a tinsel Christmas tree\"><\/p>\n<p>We don&#8217;t have a lot of free floor space that&#8217;s appropriate for an old-fashioned, conventional, fuddy-duddy <i>round<\/i> tree, so this one works well, especially when viewed from the right perspective. Kudos to Debbie for adding the lights and the odd decorations that look like crimson squid (which, I&#8217;m sure, is a traditional addition to a nativity scene in some culture, somewhere).<\/p>\n<p>My only regret is that we left the plush toy that sings <i>Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer <\/i>in Fort Stockton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In an unprecedented and probably unrepeatable display of common sense, I decided to no longer venture onto the roof to hang Christmas lights. I&#8217;m going to use a pogo stick. OK, just kidding. About the pogo stick, not the roof climbing. I feel confident that I could continue to walk around on the roof, untethered,&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2012\/11\/25\/121125_christmasdecorations\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Christmas Decorations 2012<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-society-culture","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=857"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9771,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857\/revisions\/9771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}