I don't know what it is about the fall, but apparently it is just a blog post wasteland for me1. This post will either represent my only post for the month of November or a first post after missing an entire month, depending on when I get it online. I really did not get things taken care of in the "post every week" category. Oh well, enough lamenting. Despite it not yet being December it is officially the socially excepted Christmas season. As a lead up to the most commercialized of Holy holidays I am going to be writing a series of four posts about different Christmas-y topics. Think of it as your online, eccentric Advent wreath, but with less fire, not on Sundays, and more profane2.
Christmas at Casa de Feltigan is always an event, and trust me when I tell you it has a lot more to do with the Felton half of that equation as opposed to the Milligan half. Tim has this intense Christmas...I'm trying to think of a word that would be a better fit than lust, but I don't think it exists...Christmas lust that I'm pretty sure he feels all year round but really flairs up pretty much as soon as he starts digesting his first Thanksgiving meal. Granted, it is not as extreme as some people, but it is pretty out of control. Last year the minute Tim and Carrie got home from Thanksgiving lights and trees were flying up all over the place, so I expected much of the same this year.
However, things didn't quite work out that way. When they got home Tim straightened up the perpetually disorganized extra bedroom to create a "Christmas staging area." But before any real work could begin (like bringing boxes down from the attic) we had a business meeting to attend to and the season four finale of The Venture Bros. to watch. I knew that if we didn't get some kind of decoration up, and fast, Tim would probably have a nervous breakdown, only address Carrie as Mrs. Claus, and stay up all night hugging his knees and humming Christmas carols with Christmas stocking for shoes and wrapping paper for clothes. In order to satiate him I retrieved the carved Nativity set3 from the attic and assembled it on our bookshelf. With Tim temporarily calmed we retired for the night, visions of sugar plums may or may not have danced in our heads.
Monday, according to Carrie, was "tree day." Tim and Carrie, being homeowners now, decided to go with a live tree that we can plant in the yard when we are done with it. When I got home from work I discovered that the tree had indeed been purchased and was sitting on our back porch, so step one was accomplished. Whether or not it actually survives and is planted in the ground will surely be a test of the Felton's ability to follow through/take down Christmas decorations before the thing dies. Also, as the ground will certainly be frozen by the time the decorations come down on Valentine's Day (the inside ones, the outdoor lights will likely be up until April at the earliest) hole digging will be an interesting challenge.
Speaking of lights. outdoor Christmas lights are Tim's favorite thing4 and I am sure that he wanted to get them up as soon as he could on Monday. But wait! Double disaster strikes. Disaster number one, rain. It started raining yesterday shortly after Tim got home from work. For those of you who have never put up Christmas lights a combination of rain, ladders, and electricity is not optimal. Now you may be thinking, why doesn't he simply go to the aforementioned staging area and begin the aggravating process of detangling and checking lights. I'm sure he would have were it not for disaster number two...the flu. Tim decided that last night would be a great time to come down with some kind of flu bug so he worked himself up a nice fever and even decided to throw in some vomiting for good measure. I think secretly he just wanted to have the bed to himself last night but Carrie hadn't done anything annoying enough to be banished to the couch.
So now it is Tuesday, Tim has likely spent the day at home trying to feel better. He might have put more Christmas stuff up, otherwise I will have to prescribe him a dose of Christmas music and eggnog to keep him from going over the edge. Once Tim is done regular vomiting and can get to making it look like Christmas vomited all over our house, I will snap some sweet pics to show you.
While my Christmas passion does not run as wild and free as Tim's might I still have a few traditions of my own that I always incorporate. One is that there are four Christmas movies that I will always watch every year without fail. And since I will be writing four blog posts and there are four movies it seems to follow that I tell you about one movie per post. These are not in the order of quality, or how much I enjoy them, but rather the order that I will watch them in.
The first Christmas movie I plan on watching is always my favorite to suggest when people bring up wanting to watch a Christmas movie: Die Hard. Most people will immediately discount this as a viable option which is absurd.
- Fact: Die Hard takes place at a Christmas party
- Fact: Die Hard takes place on Christmas Eve5.
- Fact: the Die Hard soundtrack includes four Christmas songs.
- Fact: Die Hard features a terrorist in a Santa hat, which leads to one of the film's great lines.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KShj0gPAH0g
So here is what we know. Die Hard is a great movie. Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Therefore: Die Hard is a great Christmas movie. Other reasons why you should watch it include: Bruce Willis making the jump to the big time, that homely woman Snake (of Wizard People, Dear Reader fame) makes his film debut6, lots of gun fights, the scene with McClane in the bathroom is what got him cast in 12 Monkeys, jokes about the FBI, Twinkies, Carl Winslow, and more gun fights. It's the most action packed Christmas movie ever and I will be watching it, very soon.
Yippee-ki-yay, motherfather7.
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1 August/September/October blog post totals for '09 and '10 = ten out of a possible 24.
2 Profane in the secular sense of the word, thank you religious studies degree.
3 More on that later.
4 Ask him about his proposal to Carrie.
5 Combine these two facts and you get one poorly planned Christmas party, and that's not .
6 That would be Alan Rickman, who I have never been disappointed in as an actor.
7 Edited to maintain the singular use of the word profane to describe this post.
2 Profane in the secular sense of the word, thank you religious studies degree.
3 More on that later.
4 Ask him about his proposal to Carrie.
5 Combine these two facts and you get one poorly planned Christmas party, and that's not .
6 That would be Alan Rickman, who I have never been disappointed in as an actor.
7 Edited to maintain the singular use of the word profane to describe this post.
