December 25, 2025 · 23:10

Christmas 2025

For those of you who celebrate, I hope this was a peaceful and pleasant holiday. For those who do not celebrate, I hope you had a quiet Thursday without too many inconveniences caused by everything being closed due to everyone else taking the day off.

We had two of the three kids (plus the one son-in-law) here, and we had a Zoom with the out-of-town daughter. The Long-Suffering Wife made our traditional Christmas feast featuring Joe’s BBQ from Kansas City, and there were a gazillion calories to be consumed. It was wonderful.

It was cool (mid 40’s) and windy as Hell, with the next band of rain (not as bad as yesterday) hitting after midnight tonight. Because everything’s already saturated with areas of flooding (nothing too bad near us) we’re back on a Flash Flood Watch. It will be be fine. At least our yard, interior courtyard, and garage no longer have any standing water. Let the healing (i.e., the drying out) begin!

This whole weekend storm has taught us that the City of Hesperia and the County of San Bernardino are aggressive and efficient about communicating about potential hazards. I didn’t necessarily expect that, but I most certainly appreciate it.

Technically tomorrow’s a day off at work, but I’ll likely spend most of the day trying to get caught up on paperwork and data entry. That’s going to be my Christmas gift to myself, spending that time to buy myself a little peace of mind and freedom from some of the usual time pressure. Put on some music or a football game or five, get some snacks, check a dozen or so things off the to-do list from Hell… Golden!

Adulting…

It sucks, but it’s probably better than most of the options.

(Oh, Khan’s gone from the wreath on the front door. Someone twenty miles downwind is going to find that picture in their front yard and I can only imagine what they’ll think about it. KHAAAAAAAANNN!!!!!)

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Forever Home, Photography, Weather

December 24, 2025 · 23:44

The Great Christmas Eve Flash Flood Of 2025

Standing in six inches of freezing cold water in a downpour with a bucket, desperately shoveling water into a large, rolling trash container so that it didn’t flood into the shiny, new, amazing Forever Home was NOT how I expected to spend Christmas Eve. But here we were!

They said we were going to just get a bit of this storm, nowhere near the worst of it. Either they lied, got it badly wrong, or Jeez Louise it must have been really, REALLY bad down by the coast.

It was a long, long night between the winds and the rain. Hey, did anyone else know that the cover on the flue to the fireplace in the master bedroom sounds just like a snare drum in a Neil Peart solo in a deluge?

(Image: Weather Underground app)

The yellow spots weren’t so bad after some of the orange and red blobs. And the City of Hesperia and County of San Bernardino do an extremely thorough and efficient job of notifying us of flash flood warnings, flash flood watches, tornado warnings, and tropical storm warnings by text, voice mail, email, and phone calls. Even in the middle of the night…

The problem in the back yard was annoying, but not much of a threat. It was when we noticed the rising water levels in the interior courtyard that things got exciting. There’s a drain, but it was apparently blocked by leaves. There are doors on all four sides, three of which lead into the house, particularly into my office, the hallway by the dining room, and the living room. Fortunately (by accident or otherwise), the fourth door is the lowest by about two inches and it leads into the garage where there was minimal damage to be suffered. Not a crisis, just a mess.

So out I go into the deluge and the ankle deep, ice cold water, to clear the leaves, set up a sump pump, and grab a bucket to help get the water level down faster than it was going up with all of the runoff from the gutters.

The joys of home ownership! Althought, to be honest, even if we were renting, I still would have been stuck doing this.

After about four hours we finally got the upper hand and the flow into the garage stopped. When the rain finally slacked off to just a Level 8 instead of an 11, I was able to get some warm and dry clothes again.

Being Christmas Eve, while I was bailing and pumping, The Long-Suffering Wife was cooking our first holiday dinner of the weekend. It was wonderful.

A quick check of the Christmas lights shows a couple of strands down on the ground due to the winds, but they all seem to still be on. No short circuits, no water damage. I love it when a plan works!

And we all lived happily ever after. Except, of course, for the mess that I still have to dry out and clean up in the garage. But given the fact that there’s rain expected every day for the next week, maybe we’ll just hold off on that.

 

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Forever Home, Weather

December 23, 2025 · 23:41

The Atmospheric River Slouching Toward Bethlehem

Okay, so it’s more “roaring” than “slouching,” with another HUGE rain event expected (along with the accompanying flooding and mudslides below last summer’s burn areas) and extremely high winds.

No snow for us – snow levels are only supposed to be down around 7,000 feet, and we’re at about 3,950. We should miss the worst of the rain as well – that will be down in the mountains rimming the LA Basin where some places will get nearly a foot of rain in the next four or five days combined. We should get 2-3 inches, which is wet and windy, but hardly a disaster.

It does give the lights a nice, dramatic look!

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Photography, Weather

December 22, 2025 · 23:22

The New Tree – Layer Two

New, bigger, better house – new, bigger, better Christmas tree. An array of options for the built in lighting, we chose to go with twinkling white lights.

Next, it’s time to two full strings of colored lights, plus two full strings of bubble lights.

I do love me some of those bubble lights. A fond memory from my childhood, even if they were the very old-fashioned kind that were both highly flammable and poisonous. (Or should that be venomous?)

The modern lights are safer. But they will still break if banged around, and today the algorithm brought me a string of videos of large dogs, particularly great danes, obliterating Christmas trees, and The Long-Suffering Wife dearly wants a great dane, so… Let’s hope this isn’t a foreshadowing comment.

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Dogs, Photography, Ronnie

December 21, 2025 · 23:04

Winter Solstice 2025

As the light dies at the end of the shortest day of the year, we try to supplement the remaining light in the beautiful sunset with those of our own celebrations.

You can think and believe what you want about the Bible and the story of Jesus’ birth, but I’ll guarantee you that he wasn’t born in late December or the middle of winter. Too many things point to a spring birth. But the reason the early Christians celebrated around the winter solstice was so that they would blend in, not stand out, and not be targets for persecution.

The winter solstice was known and celebrated a thousand year or more before the Roman Empire. Pre-historic peoples needed to know the seasons in order to know when to plant crops, when to hunt, how to survive. The days gettting shorter and colder had to be terrifying with no knowledge of what was causing it (Earth’s axial tilt) and whether or not longer, warmer days would return. So when the solstice came and the days started to lengthen again, it was a cause for celebration, often with symbols of light being prominent.

Millenia later, I put up a gazillion Christmas lights. Slightly different reasoning and knowledge bases perhaps, same celebration.

Welcome back to the light!

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Filed under Astronomy, Christmas Lights, Photography, Sunsets

December 20, 2025 · 22:33

Hesperia Christmas Lights 2025 – Day Four

When last we saw our plucky hero, the new Forever Home had a substantially larger roofline than the old houses, so while the “baseline” colored C9 lights and white icicle lights had been put up, there were large gaps in the front that didn’t have lights at all. By the time this was discovered, buying additional lights in the store was out of the question and it took a couple weeks for them to be found and shipped in an online purchase. Now they’re here, and it was time to get those “baseline” light sets up.

Because I’m working from both ends and meeting over the front doors, there are more lights there than anywhere else as the sets overlap. That’s fine. It draws attention to the front doors, which is also where the wreaths are and where the roofline naturally is larger and more distinct.

I also started throwing strings of small colored LEDs into the now leafless maple tree. It’s a good start, but I would like to double the number and get some into the upper branches. We’ll see if I can spare any time tomorrow.

Overall, I like it, a lot. It’s a much bigger canvas than we’ve ever had at the last two houses, so I’ll need to step up my game next year to fill it better, but this year has given me valuable information to use to plan that.

Another area that can use some more lights to wrap up is over by the driveway, where only three of the seven trees have lights right now. Again, we’ll see if I have any time tomorrow to finish it up.

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets

December 19, 2025 · 22:18

National Basilica – Brussels

My brain was empty, awaiting imprinting or guidance. I ran across a social media thread full of stained glass…

I had stumbled into the National Basilica in Brussels by accident.

Since our hotel was near the city center, my strategy was to get on the subway and go out a dozen stops or so and then make my way back, stopping to see churches, parks, sculpture gardens, architecturally interesting buildings, etm.

This was near the station where I got off the subway and came up, and it was open. At least, no one yelled at me for wandering around like The Ugly American and taking pictures. (I was actually very polite and well behaved.)

The stained glass offerings were pretty straightforward, nothing too abstract or spectacular. But all very bright and lovely.

I found the sunbeams coming in through the dome windows, piercing down into the darkness below.

I’m glad that I stopped!

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Filed under Art, Photography, Travel

December 18, 2025 · 23:49

No Context For You – December 18th

Did anyone else know that Christmas is a week from today? And no one told me?? Thanks!

I mean, I knew it was December, and Christmas was coming, but I really hadn’t paid much attention to the details.

IT’S ONLY A WEEK AWAY!

Boy, that one snuck up on me…

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Filed under Paul, Photography

December 17, 2025 · 23:45

Go Outside Around Sunset!

Big picture, like, we’re talking “annually,” the timing of sunset shifts with the seasons, so knowing when it is (ballpark figure, at least – 16:30 or 19:30?) keeps you in touch with the planet you live on and the progress of the seasons. The Winter Solstice is next week! Are you ready?

Looking at the more near-term picture, check the weather, look at the sunset (sometimes it’s just okay, sometimes it’s spectacular, most of the time it’s somewhere in between, like today), see if anyone else in the neighborhood has put up any new Christmas lights, (especially if it’s windy as all get out like today) see if any of our lights have come down, and so on. You should be getting out a few times during the day anyway to stretch your legs, but the sunset one is particularly important.

Looking for the meaning of life? The odds are against your finding it out here with this view, but they’re a lot higher than they are sitting in front of a computer playing a game, working on a spreadsheet, doing data entry, or doomscrolling through social media.

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Filed under Photography, Sunsets

December 16, 2025 · 23:28

Wispy Redeux

It was quiet. It was warm.

I was taking a break for a couple of minutes, stretching my legs.

It was good to get away from my desk, to not be staring at a computer screen that was twelve inches in front of my face. To be reminded that the Universe is bigger than that.

A tiny bit of white atmospheric condensation gives the blue sky some texture, some character, some depth.

Keep your eyes open! Stretch your legs! Stay hydrated!

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Filed under Health, Photography, Weather