Heya,

Check it out, the Christmas 2008 tree.  We went out and pre-selected it before the snow and cold arrived.  This is all Nat’s doing btw, good call.  We can go and cut it down anytime after Thanksgiving.  The good news is that they have plenty of tall trees here and we can keep going back for a while (the place we’ve been going to has run out of tall fatties).  The photo quality is pretty lame (cell cam) but you can see that it’s a tree amongst trees.  It’s 12ft tall and ~8ft around and works for us

Went to a couple of malls last night to finish up the Christmas shopping, I’m amazed at how many people AREN’T shopping. We first went up to the Mall of NH in Manchester, I had no problem at all parking near the Macy’s entrance and getting right into the store. Once there, it was like a mildly busy Saturday at any mall. Sure, there were people walking around and picking up goodies, but not nearly as many as I would have expected the week before Christmas.

Next we went down to the Rockingham Mall, same thing. I parked even closer to the Macy’s entrance. I figured that this mall (being the better of the two) would be packed inside. Nope. It was just like the previous, no problem walking around, no getting stuck behind slow ppl or slowing down others in a hurry. Amazing.

I guess I’m just surprised, I remember working for the Bombay Co. and this time of year being a flipping madhouse. There wasn’t a minute to take a break, eat, drink, escape from the customers (be they nice or flaming jackholes) or do anything but sell, sell, sell. I was actually chatting with bored sales people in some stores. Just amazing.

So is it an economic thing or (as is my preference) are we doing more and more with our computers (rhetorical).

Well, we’ve got the tree, the lights are up and the house is decorated. We’ve even gone out and made our Christmas cards which I’ll hopefully have time to get in the mail this week. It looks as though things are coming together a little earlier than normal this year… Though now that I think of it, we’ve yet to start shopping…

This year (like last) our tree came from the K of C in Plaistow NH. We’ve found two GREAT trees there and the place itself is a lot of fun. It’s up on top of a pseudo mountain and they drive you both up and down on ATVs. Pretty cool. This year we took down a 20 foot tree and had to cut it a bit to get the part we wanted. It’s cool that they don’t mind doing that (actually, it works to their benefit, not many ppl really want a 20′ tree). My favorite part is that they do the cutting, no dull bow saw, just flag em’ down and they come a runnin’ with a chain saw. The prices can’t be beat, they sell ANY tree, size matters not, for $40.00. I tend to tip as all the proceeds go to a food pantry. The site is maintained by a cool ass guy (wish I knew his name) who actually loses money as the tree replenishment is out of his pocket. I assume that he pays the folks who’re cutting the trees and driving us dolts around out of tree sales, but I don’t know for sure. All in all, I think it’s a pretty good place to get a tree. Sadly, we’ll have to go some place else next year, they don’t have many more 13 footers that appealed to us. We’ll go back in a couple of years and see what they’ve got.

I started a Christmas wiki this year to track all of the stuff we need to get done and what people like (I never remember). I LOVE my wiki, and I’m happily making notes and laying things out so I can always look back and see what works and what doesn’t (like vodka tonics, those DON’T work on Christmas, and even less the following morning). Just so much to keep in mind

So, for those of you that are interested, here’s a low res shot of the tree before we got it placed and decorated. The ladders give it such a warm Christmas feeling, no?

If you want to see it done up proper, you’ll have to be there on Christmas