Today is the infamous Tree Lighting Ceremony in Old Naples and it happens directly below the office where Kathy and I have worked for several years. We always have a small gathering to observe the ceremony, which lasts approximately 3 seconds! Actually, there are numerous events going on around the tree lighting itself; bands, choirs, Lois Tomey with Wink News and 30,000 Naplites in attendance. This reminds me of some true Christmas Tree stories of my life.
Let's start with the oldest and move forward. These are all absolutely true.
Year 1 - We bought a Christmas Tree in Indiana and the base was a bit too big for the Christmas Tree Stand; you know, the one with the ring and three big-ass thumbscrews that are supposed to hold it in place. Also, this tree had very low hanging branches that were totally in the way of getting the tree into the stand. I decided I could trim off the bottom branches and shave off some of the bottom to fit into the stand. About 45 minutes later, my 7 foot birch tree was about 5 feet 4 inches and everyone was upset with how bare the bottom of the tree was. Joy to the world.
Year 2 - We bought an excellent "live" Christmas Tree, got it home and appropriately in the same stand as last year. The circumference of this tree bottom was a lot less than last year's tree and I only trimmed branches as requested by the family. We hoisted the tree into the stand, screwed in the thumbscrews and put water in the base. Once we covered the base with the tree rug, the girls began to decorate the tree. About two hours later, the tree was completely decorated and plugged in. About three minutes after we finished, the tree fell completely over into the living room. I don't know how many bulbs and priceless ornaments were destroyed, but we cleaned up glass chips for a few weeks. We couldn't for the life of us get this tree to stand up on its own. I eventually rigged a wire from the ceiling to the middle of the tree that allowed it to stand proudly. The angel had to share a little bit of her space with the wire, but I don't think she minded much. Redecorating a tree isn't half as much fun as decorating one.
Year 3 - We took all of the children to a Christmas Tree Farm and physically cut down our own tree. This was truly fun and the children had a great time and left with excellent memories. We stowed the tree on top of the car and brought it home. It was freezing cold. All the family went inside and I told them I would bring the tree around to the back in a minute. I pulled the tree off the car and dragged it through the yard to the back door without a hitch. I was determined to have a great tree decorating ceremony this year without tragedy. So far, I was totally stoked with success! We pulled the tree inside and put it in our NEW CHRISTMAS TREE STAND, complete with a fall over guarantee! The tree fit perfectly and was in place in record time. The girls began the delicate task of placing a few less ornaments on the tree than last year (not out of choice,) but things were going very, very smoothly until someone said, "What's that smell?" Then, we all began smelling what certainly had the distinct odor of freshly thawed dog poop. Everybody checked their shoes and found nothing. The smell was strongest around the tree. On the back of the tree, from the base to near the tip, on many, many branches was dog poop. When I dragged it through the yard, I must have stirred up some recently deposited and nearly frozen dog poop from one of our two dogs. Only when it started thawing did we recognize the issue. Down came the tree in year three. It was about two hours later before we had it completely washed off and ready for redress.
Year 4 - The tree we bought this year was the most expensive, but most beautiful tree we had ever seen! We brought it home, put it in its stand and began to decorate it when my wife noticed that many needles were falling from the tree. More were falling on this, the first day of our tree, than had fallen on the last day of the previous three years trees. Upon closer inspection, we noticed that the tree's spectacular green hue was not actually the hue of the tree itself, but of a beautiful pine green spray paint! We snipped a branch, took it back to the vendor and wanted to know if we could get a refund. The answer was, "No, we spray all of our trees green." This was the last year we bought a tree from them and, I haven't seen them in the area since.
Year 5 - We bought a relatively affordable tree this year and I was totally pleased with the height and shape of the tree compared to last year's most expensive one. We didn't realize until we brought it home that it was a prickly pine tree and was nearly impossible to decorate without drawing blood. We got through it though and looked forward to next year when we were going to purchase our very first totally fake Christmas Tree!
Bless you all and I hope you have a delightful, fun filled holiday season.
D
Monday, November 24, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 2008
A Very Intriguing Riddle
Well, I didn't catch any flack over yesterday's post, and frankly, I'm happy that I didn't although, I still may. My lovely daughter who made a quick visit from UCF this week (to see us, do some laundry and restock supplies) brought me a very interesting Riddle. I couldn't solve it quickly enough, but Kathy did and so did our daughter. I wanted to solve it, and probably would have eventually, but both Ash and Kathy solved it in less time than it took me not to solve it. The best time so far is Kathy at 30 minutes on the dot.
Let me know if you can solve this in less time than that, if you wish. You can email me with your results and I will tell you if you are correct. There is only one correct answer.
Imagine 5 houses in a row. Each house is painted its own particular color and inhabited by a person of different nationality with unique careers, pets and choice of drink.
The Englishman lives in the red house
The Spaniard owns a dog
Only coffee is drunk in the green house
The Ukranian drinks tea
The green house is immediately to the right of the ivory house (as you face the houses)
The Stockbroker owns snails
The Academic Advisor lives in the yellow house
Milk is drunk in the middle house
The Norwegian lives in the first house on the left
The Doctor lives next door to the man with the fox
The Academic Advisor lives next to the house where the horse is kept
The Teacher drinks orange juice
The Carpenter is Japanese
The Norwegian lives next to the blue house
Who owns the zebra?
Who drinks the water?
I look forward to your results.
Let me know if you can solve this in less time than that, if you wish. You can email me with your results and I will tell you if you are correct. There is only one correct answer.
Imagine 5 houses in a row. Each house is painted its own particular color and inhabited by a person of different nationality with unique careers, pets and choice of drink.
The Englishman lives in the red house
The Spaniard owns a dog
Only coffee is drunk in the green house
The Ukranian drinks tea
The green house is immediately to the right of the ivory house (as you face the houses)
The Stockbroker owns snails
The Academic Advisor lives in the yellow house
Milk is drunk in the middle house
The Norwegian lives in the first house on the left
The Doctor lives next door to the man with the fox
The Academic Advisor lives next to the house where the horse is kept
The Teacher drinks orange juice
The Carpenter is Japanese
The Norwegian lives next to the blue house
Who owns the zebra?
Who drinks the water?
I look forward to your results.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Favorite Websites
One thing that really entertains me is the discovery of a very cool website! Whether it is the look and feel of the site, the services the site provides or the products it is promoting, I love to view them. Today I thought I would share some of my favorite sites:
The Best Secrets From Reader's Digest - This two page site provides some fantastic website deals and bargains. Two of my favorite sites were brought to my attention from this one site.
Hulu - Free, full length, popular movies on your computer. Movies have commercials, but they are absolutely free for the watching. This should be a popular site for those of you who travel and have to stay overnight in hotels. When you first log on, you must sign up for an account. Do it by clicking in the upper right hand corner Sign Up link.
Zappos - Free shipping, free returns on Shoes...and hundreds of other items. The last pair of Reef's I bought came from Zappos. I got them for $34.00 dollars! The website upgraded my free 5 day shipping to free overnight shipping just because I made a mistake when I tried to order them.
Weather - This site is the most interactive and informative, especially for tropic related weather issues. I check into it everyday when we are in hurricane season.
Perceptual Experiment - Watch the video on the right hand side after you read and follow the instructions. You will be completely amazed.
An Interesting Calendar/Clock - Funny. Watch it for at least 1 minute.
Wizardry - It can't really read your mind, but boy was this a difficult one to figure out.
Chris Bliss - Make sure your sound is on. If you are not amazed, you have probably seen everything you ever need to see.
An Interesting Time Waster - Fun to do one to four times, but very interesting nonetheless. Here's another one.
Gasoline Prices - Put in your Zip Code. Many phones have this now, but for those of you without, this will save you a few bucks over time.
I have more, but I've got to do some recruiting before I go broke. See you next time.
The Best Secrets From Reader's Digest - This two page site provides some fantastic website deals and bargains. Two of my favorite sites were brought to my attention from this one site.
Hulu - Free, full length, popular movies on your computer. Movies have commercials, but they are absolutely free for the watching. This should be a popular site for those of you who travel and have to stay overnight in hotels. When you first log on, you must sign up for an account. Do it by clicking in the upper right hand corner Sign Up link.
Zappos - Free shipping, free returns on Shoes...and hundreds of other items. The last pair of Reef's I bought came from Zappos. I got them for $34.00 dollars! The website upgraded my free 5 day shipping to free overnight shipping just because I made a mistake when I tried to order them.
Weather - This site is the most interactive and informative, especially for tropic related weather issues. I check into it everyday when we are in hurricane season.
Perceptual Experiment - Watch the video on the right hand side after you read and follow the instructions. You will be completely amazed.
An Interesting Calendar/Clock - Funny. Watch it for at least 1 minute.
Wizardry - It can't really read your mind, but boy was this a difficult one to figure out.
Chris Bliss - Make sure your sound is on. If you are not amazed, you have probably seen everything you ever need to see.
An Interesting Time Waster - Fun to do one to four times, but very interesting nonetheless. Here's another one.
Gasoline Prices - Put in your Zip Code. Many phones have this now, but for those of you without, this will save you a few bucks over time.
I have more, but I've got to do some recruiting before I go broke. See you next time.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Halloween
Well, Halloween was a blast again! We started the festivities at about 11 AM getting to St. George of The Dragon restaurant in time to get a seat at the bar. We are in full costume again. And when I say we, I mean Holly, dressed as a character in a children's book that she has created and authored; Kristin, dressed as Helga, the German Beer Selling Winch...and with her physique, she made a perfect Helga...doing Omm Pa Pa's throughout the day; Tammy, dressed as Cat Woman complete with whiskers and Victoria Secret attire; Kathy, the love of my life dressed as a funky witch with lime green and pink adornments; and me as the wicked witch of the west...complete with full green facial paint!
The only reason I go as a witch and not a warlock is that I have developed the ability to laugh exactly like a witch without destroying my vocal chords. Kathy, on the other hand tried to and successfully accomplished a very similar laugh, but her voice is still nearly gone today! I give her kudos for getting it right. We had lunch at the George and scared a number of customers. Besides the staff, we were the only ones in costume.
We left the George and travelled to one of our other favorite restaurants; Campiello's to meet up with our favorite bartenderess - Christine. She has been absent for about three months heading up to New Jersey for family things. We were glad to see her back, but she was in a bit of mood perhaps because things weren't in the order in which she requires for proper customer service. We couldn't scare too many people there because it is outdoor seating and very bright...just the opposite of the George!
After having a drink there, we went to Tommy's just to say hello and headed down to 5th Avenue where most people would be celebrating.
Fifth Avenue hosted us properly with the wait staff dressed to the hilt! My favorite was the bartender who's outfit looked like it was his mother carrying him on her back like a small, but well overgrown child. Hilarious to say the least. We also were able to scare a number of small children coming in costume for candy that McCabes was passing out.
We had three other parties to attend, but only made it to two because it was getting quite late. On the way to party number 1, we stopped unannounced into a softball parent's house just because we have such fond memories of spending time with them. They were gracious enough to invite us in and catch us up on their lives. They are also empty nesters for the first time this year!
Our first party was about 20 minutes out of town at a local Police Officer friend's house....everyone was in costume. That was a nice party.
Our last stop was on the way home where we stopped at the Clarks. We have attended the Clark's party for the last 8 years because it was always full of lively people and fun. This year, it was far different. All of our girls are in college, so the festivities and fun were lacking. There were no costumes, no food, no family and very little fun. We did scare a few trick-or-treaters though and that made it worth the stop. I felt sorry for Kris who loves her three daughters very much and probably misses them at times like this.
All in all, it was a great Halloween. I have retired the witch, however, and have already thought of my costume for next year. It won't involve screaming....or makeup.
The only reason I go as a witch and not a warlock is that I have developed the ability to laugh exactly like a witch without destroying my vocal chords. Kathy, on the other hand tried to and successfully accomplished a very similar laugh, but her voice is still nearly gone today! I give her kudos for getting it right. We had lunch at the George and scared a number of customers. Besides the staff, we were the only ones in costume.
We left the George and travelled to one of our other favorite restaurants; Campiello's to meet up with our favorite bartenderess - Christine. She has been absent for about three months heading up to New Jersey for family things. We were glad to see her back, but she was in a bit of mood perhaps because things weren't in the order in which she requires for proper customer service. We couldn't scare too many people there because it is outdoor seating and very bright...just the opposite of the George!
After having a drink there, we went to Tommy's just to say hello and headed down to 5th Avenue where most people would be celebrating.
Fifth Avenue hosted us properly with the wait staff dressed to the hilt! My favorite was the bartender who's outfit looked like it was his mother carrying him on her back like a small, but well overgrown child. Hilarious to say the least. We also were able to scare a number of small children coming in costume for candy that McCabes was passing out.
We had three other parties to attend, but only made it to two because it was getting quite late. On the way to party number 1, we stopped unannounced into a softball parent's house just because we have such fond memories of spending time with them. They were gracious enough to invite us in and catch us up on their lives. They are also empty nesters for the first time this year!
Our first party was about 20 minutes out of town at a local Police Officer friend's house....everyone was in costume. That was a nice party.
Our last stop was on the way home where we stopped at the Clarks. We have attended the Clark's party for the last 8 years because it was always full of lively people and fun. This year, it was far different. All of our girls are in college, so the festivities and fun were lacking. There were no costumes, no food, no family and very little fun. We did scare a few trick-or-treaters though and that made it worth the stop. I felt sorry for Kris who loves her three daughters very much and probably misses them at times like this.
All in all, it was a great Halloween. I have retired the witch, however, and have already thought of my costume for next year. It won't involve screaming....or makeup.
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