Attention @home users who are on the notify list – please re-subscribe under whatever email address you’re currently using, because I got a ton of bounces last night, and I need to remove the bouncing addresses from the notify list for the sake of my sanity. Are y’all ready to take an axe to @home, or what? That whole situation has to suck.
My poor notify list. I always ALWAYS send out my notifies with the email addresses suppressed, only last night I was in a hurry to go watch Boston Public, and wasn’t paying attention, and I accidentally put the email nickname in BOTH the "To:" AND the "BCC:" fields, and so not only did my poor notify-ees get a notify email with 250 email addresses listed, but they got TWO of them. And then I spammed them by emailing and apologizing!
I swear I’ll be more careful next time…
Many thanks to reader Cynthia, who bought Waltzing the Cat for me off of my wish list. Y’all know how much I love the unexpected mail!
Speaking of mail – as far as the Giveaway goes, I’ve gotten everything that could fit in a padded envelope mailed, and everything else aside from the stereo will be going out tomorrow. For once, I’m way ahead of (self-imposed) schedule.
That picture on the front page, by the way, is of the front of our house with all the christmas stuff turned on. It’s darker than I’d like, but the one I took when it was lighter out was too light, so I had to pick one.
When I look out the front door, there’s a house directly in my line of sight that has done the unthinkable. That’s right, they’ve mixed the colors of their christmas lights, and it drives me nuts. Two trees are covered with PINK lights, there are strings of multicolored lights down the side of their driveway, a bush or two covered in blue lights, and white lights on the front of their house. I hate it, it looks horrible to me. Fred thinks I’m insane and that I pulled the "don’t mix the colors of lights" rule out of my ass. Obviously he has no idea of the subtle rules of a civilized society.
The house I like the most is to our left, and it has red and white lights across the top of the house, and lighted wreaths on several windows. Tasteful, pretty, and not an eyesore.
I guess I should add here that if you MUST mix light colors, you might as well go all the way and have one of those houses where every item in the yard is covered with lights, and moving lighted reindeer structures in the yard, a huge Santa on the roof. You get the idea. Those kinds of houses, I like. It appeals to the white trash in me.
I ought to take a walk around the neighborhood with the camera for a future entry.
So, the realtor we bought our house from? Who lives two houses away? He came over yesterday asking Fred for help with his DVD player. When they were back at his house, Fred was talking about something, and mentioned me by name.
"Who’s Robyn?" said the realtor. Apparently, he’d forgotten my name. Bastard.
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Not only is there a “don’t mix the colors of lights” rule, there is also a “don’t having blinking lights that all blink off/on (or the same color off/on) at the same time” rule. If you’re going to have blinking lights they have to be completely random blinks that never synch up or, better yet, fade blinks. Having all the lights go off and on at the same time (or all the lights of one color at one time, or different STRINGS blinking at different RATES) is an abomination yea unto the Lord.
The only exception to “don’t mix the colors of lights” rule is if it’s symmetrical in some way. Like white lights on all the windows and red lights on all the doors, or multicolored lights on the house and blue lights on the shrubbery/sidewalks, or whatever.
Although it must be said that my favorite Christmas decoration of all time (and I’m not an anti-Christmas person!) was a house smack dab in the middle of an entire neighborhood in our town that goes all out – I mean 3D displays, simulated stained glass on one entire wall of a three-story house, animatronics on the balconies and yards, a 40-foot Christmas tree that they hire a construction truck to come decorate, police cars directing and restricting traffic from December 1 through January ~5, the whole shazaam. In the middle of all that ostentation, this guy ran one string of red lights around the edge of his roof and then spelled out in neat block (red!) letters on the slope of the roof that faces the road (and all the gawkers): “BAH HUMBUG.”
Yeah, those houses that go all out are really exempt from any rules, aren’t they? 🙂