Category Archives: Christmas Lights

At the peak of the roof on the side of the house. Fifteen feet up? Eighteen?

Heavy duty ladder, solid footing, moving carefully and staying close to the ladder, moving the ladder instead of reaching.

If anything starts to go south, try to go west, to the left, where that big, soft (ish) bush is, not onto the A/C unit or that fence or those hard, metal, pokey things are. A good plan, never tested.

Pity it’s been so dry, from up here you can see over all of the neighboring houses and since we’re on top of a hill to begin with, the mountains can be seen clearly. If it were colder and wetter once in a while there would be snow. Not now.

The worst part was having to do it twice – not much holds the big lights on and if anything hangs up and pulls the wrong way… Ziiiiiiiiiiip, down they all come. The second time a few more solid anchors got added. Fool me once, shame on you, and all of that.

I’m going to be sooooooooo sore tomorrow. A lot of time on ladders today.

So worth it! The Younger Daughter came over and helped a ton, so we got a lot of lights up on the first day of Christmas lights season.

More to come, of course! Never enough until I’m blowing the fuse with any additional lights, and even then I’m looking for another circuit that might have some capacity. But for today, that’s a DAMN FINE start!

I’ve pointed out before that the first night after the Christmas lights come down is always a melancholy and bittersweet one. This year the task of taking down the lights was made more “exciting” with a bit of wind. I decided to take it with a bit of good humor.

Not to worry – nothing bent, nothing broken, on either me or the BBQ.

It’s amazing that it takes about three days for me to put up the lights and about three hours to take them down. I’m sure there’s some mathematical theory that explains that, probably dealing with chaos theory, increasing entropy, organized vs disorganized eigenstate vectors, or some such jargon. It just always seems weird to me.

And so, at the end of the day (literally) we’re left with just the porch and garage lights and Orion rising, partially hidden by that giant tree in the back yard.

It’s Christmas Eve, 2020. Our break from work for a few days started today, so I got the last of the lights up, just in time to guide Santa in tonight while hopefully not distracting any Southwest 737s going into Burbank.

Up above it’s still cloudy, but there’s a bright-ish spot where the Moon’s trying to peek through.

And down the street, several other houses have decorated this year.

I don’t remember most of those houses having any lights in the previous two years that we’ve been here. Down the hill the other way there are a couple of places decorated as well, which didn’t happen in the past.

Maybe folks just really, really needed the lights this year.

I hope that you and yours have a safe and joyous Christmas tomorrow!

A number of factors are slowing things down more noticeably this year when it comes to putting up the Christmas lights.

First, I find that I’m feeling old. Maybe it’s just the effects of almost nine months of COVID lockdown that’s limited my physical movements, and the Thanksgiving week diet that’s put a half dozen pounds back on, but it might also be related to the percentage of grey vs black hair on my head.

Secondly, it’s just me. Way back when of course it was always a family affair with all three kids helping, and even in the past few years the Youngest Daughter usually came by for a day and helped since she still lives in LA. Naturally, again due to COVID, she’s not stopping by this year.

Third, it’s infrastructure! We’re renting instead of owning, and over the course of almost thirty years we had a lot of little hooks and nails and power cords and a routine that made even a much bigger display go up quickly. I can’t do that in a rented house, so I’ve created temporary attachment points for lights using nylon twist ties. That worked well for two years, but I’m finding that many of those nylon ties are breaking when I try to use them this year, so I have to take the time to put up new ones.

Finally, my decorations are getting older and more fragile even faster than my body is. I won’t put up strings of lights that have sections burnt out, and I’m finding a fair amount of the ones I put up last year that are failing this year. I don’t really want to go off to the hardware store to get new ones (COVID!!) so sorting through the bins of old lights and cobbling together new sets that all work is time consuming.

Oh, well. I guess it keeps me off the streets at night.

I did manage to get all of the timers set, went through the big bulbs along the roof line and replaced a few that had burnt out, and got several strings of lights out into the bushes and plants along the front of the house. I didn’t get to the big, bright strings that normally go over the garage (the big dark area on the left in the picture), mainly because I can’t find them yet. Maybe this next weekend.

In the meantime, it’s getting there, not terrible, just not finished yet. But I did get the full moon rising over the house last night, so that was pretty sweet.