Me on Christmas
Got a shorter tree this year, which made loading, unloading, carrying, and putting it up far easier. Note the old-fashioned C9 bulbs on the tree — very proud of incandescent Christmas lighting.
Exciting things happening today, mainly involving redoing stuff that we didn’t get to do on their actual holiday dates:
nickd on gratitude during the Christmas season:
if you have a lover, here is the most important thing that you can do. you should go over to that lover and tell them that you are grateful for their existence, and their love. because one very, very sacred thing that exists in this rather bleak-at-best world is knowing that someone out there gives such a passionate damn about you, your health, your success, and your well-being, and is willing to take you seriously and meet you halfway in their life.
With blizzard-like conditions, sub-zero windchills, 1/4 mile visibility, and 2-4 inches of snow forecast, we’ve got the recipe for a tasty pre-winter weather treat! Unfortunately, the weather outside is frightful because some people still have some place to go. For example: Mykala is alone in Saint Paul waiting to pick her parents up from the airport. They’ve been delayed and rerouted to Iowa — I hope everything works out A-O.K. In the meantime, I’ll be here wrapping presents, thinking about taking an indoor run, and eagerly anticipating Christmas tomorrow. Perhaps Mykala and I will even play a digital game of Scrabble in which she’ll spell auditors on a triple word score with a 50 point bonus for using all 7 letters. We will see.
Some more masking — since the low light levels create color noise in the dark areas, I masked out the center area of interest and turned the outside edges to black and white. That way, your eyes are attracted to the colors of the Christmas lights, and not the colors from the sensor noise.
Did a bit of masking to get this effect right.
Keillor Writes about the holidays - Keillor’s written tone swings like a pendulum between stinging, acrid, political pieces barely containing his rage … and much more pleasant prose, as seen here. This has been waiting to be uploaded to tumbledry since the middle of December.
I got this mask for cold weather running!
Merry Christmas, everyone. Do keep your loved ones near as another year draws to a close: in tough times, they are all you’ve got. Speaking of tough times, I’ve been absent yet again not for scholastic reasons but for health reasons. I got a virus that absolutely clotheslined me. I hope you didn’t contract anything like it. And if I’ve seen you recently, I hope I didn’t give this sickness to you.
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