In high school, I convinced everyone one Christmas that I was allergic to tinsel. I thought it would just be a funny thing to say, "I'm allergic to tinsel," and that no one would take me seriously because, well, it's just shiny plastic. But people believed me, so I ran with it. I swear I had half the school convinced that if I came within three feet of tinsel, the fumes would make my tongue swell up in my throat, and I'd need an epipen to keep me alive.
I've loved outside Christmas lights since I was a little kid, and my grandpa would take us up to Spokane's South Hill to look at the lights up there. When we moved into this house (an A-frame), I decided it was a natural for lights, so we go to town...white icicle lights on the roof line and the front deck, blue icicle lights on the fence and a lighted nativity scene in the very front. We used to have a beautiful Moravian "Star of Bethlehem" too, but I didn't replace it when it broke because we no longer have a place to hang it.
Redwolf
...agus déanfaidh mé do mholadh ar an gcruit a Dhia, a Dhia liom!
I just love lights!
I love to see everybody else's lights, I love to have lights too.
But they have to be colored lights, not plain white lights. Too boring.
I love when all the inside electric lights are turned off and you just have the glow of all the strings of colored lights... on the tree, the staircase, the porch and yard outdoors... Then you have a fire in the fireplace.... mmmmmm
I'm feeling so romantic.
So what is there not to understand about lights?
M
Tinsel ~ ahhh.... My Dad would hang them painstakingly individually..
We kids would throw tinsel on the tree in big gobs, he would spend hours after we went to bed, redoing all the tinsel strand by strand...
Tinsel ~ ahhh.... My Dad would hang them painstakingly individually..
Me too. I hate to see it just "globbed" on the tree. I love it. I can remember when what we had at home was really metal, which draped much better,not like the light, fluffly plastic stuff we get now.
"Let low-country intruder approach a cove
And eyes as gray as icicle fangs measure stranger
For size, honesty, and intent." John Foster West
I used to do tinsel (icicles) until we got our first boxer. I then began to notice that every piece within his reach wasn't on the tree anymore. He wasn't QUITE eating it - he was walking next to the tree and it was sticking to his jowls, THEN he would eat it.
Since he had previously eaten an entire cassette tape - case and all - I didn't worry too much about it...........
Congratulations wrote:I just don't understand Christmas lights.
It's like this. It all started with Judas Macabee and there was a miracle of the oil and so people started burning lamps and then candles. Then the idea of lighting houses caught on. After the electric light bulb was invented, people went to using those, so they didn't have to rebuild their houses year after year.
You forgot to put in the alternative response "swear at wife and accuse her of loosening bulbs whilst rummaging for something else in the cupboard sometime last July."
"Last night, among his fellow roughs,
He jested, quaff'd and swore."
They cut me down and I leapt up high
I am the life that'll never, never die.
I'll live in you if you'll live in me -
I am the lord of the dance, said he!
Tell us something.: I've picked up the tinwhistle again after several years, and have recently purchased a Chieftain v5 from Kerry Whistles that I cannot wait to get (why can't we beam stuff yet, come on Captain Kirk, get me my Low D!)
Nanohedron wrote:I recall one year when one of my brothers, I think it was, decided he'd had it with the Christmas lights thing and decided not to put them up. One of the neighbor ladies took umbrage at this and hissed at him, "What, aren't you even Christian??".
We have one neighbor who's convinced we're satanists because we don't go to their church or put up christmas lights...
She's a lot like Weekender's air-horn lady (the one from Fark) in a lot of ways, so I'm in no hurry to convince her that we're anything other than what she thinks we are.
Good entertainment.
“First lesson: money is not wealth; Second lesson: experiences are more valuable than possessions; Third lesson: by the time you arrive at your goal it’s never what you imagined it would be so learn to enjoy the process” - unknown
Tell us something.: I play flute, whistle and harp and have been a member on this board for many years. I have tended to be a lurker recently and just posted a response for the first time in quite awhile.
My husband only likes the red, blue and green lights- no orange, yellow or magenta. It's hard to find strings that come that way so he creates them himself. I try not to give him a hard time about it, but I wish he'd go back to wood-carving 'cause then I'd only have shavings on the floor instead of tiny pieces of glass and those darn fuses....
missy wrote:I used to do tinsel (icicles) until we got our first boxer. I then began to notice that every piece within his reach wasn't on the tree anymore. He wasn't QUITE eating it - he was walking next to the tree and it was sticking to his jowls, THEN he would eat it.
Since he had previously eaten an entire cassette tape - case and all - I didn't worry too much about it...........
That's a good point to bring up. You got pretty lucky...tinsel can be DEADLY to dogs (and, for some reason, many of them like to eat it). It can literally tear their guts to ribbons.
Redwolf
...agus déanfaidh mé do mholadh ar an gcruit a Dhia, a Dhia liom!
Redwolf wrote: ....tinsel can be DEADLY to dogs (and, for some reason, many of them like to eat it). It can literally tear their guts to ribbons.
Not Porky. He ate anything and everything, skeleton keys, the ex's tie tack (3 times), previously mentioned cassette tape, etc. I swear that dog had an iron clad stomach. If he had come "un-named" I would have called him "Hoover".
Charlene wrote:I was going to try to see if I could troubleshoot it today on my day off, but I'm stuck working at my husband's bookstore (on my day off from my paying job) because he has to take his mother out shopping.
I meant to mention before, if you don't already use one, an
inductive bulb tester is very handy for trouble shooting. You don't
even have to remove the bulbs to test them, just touch the tester's
tip to each bulb and it will tell you when it finds the burnt out bulb.
I've seen them in hardware stores and catalogs.
gonzo914 wrote:we just set grandpa in front of the tree and waited for him to sneeze.
A tree? You had a tree? Luxury! We used to dream of having a tree .... or a grandpa ... and gawd knows we would have thought we were sitting in gravy to have a little bit of sneeze to share amongst ourselves. No, we had it tough. I had to get up Christmas morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our Mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
And you try and tell Santa Claus that ... and he won't believe you.
djm
I'd rather be atop the foothills than beneath them.
