The Worst Christmas Ever

Christmas can be a stressful time.  Decorating, shopping, planning parties, gift wrapping, mailing Christmas cards, caroling, writing letters to Santa, shoveling Christmas cookies down the gullet like there's no tomorrow (or is that just me?).  Around these parts, as a way to help diffuse holiday season tension, when something "goes wrong" I like to proclaim that - as a result - This is the worst Christmas ever!

One of the Christmas tree lights isn't working?  This is the worst Christmas ever!

Mail order ships the wrong merchandise?  This is the worst Christmas ever!

Fresh baked cookie only had four chocolate chips and not seven?  This is the worst Christmas ever!

Mr and Mrs Incomparable Joe Wilhelm send yet another Christmas card featuring their mangy mutts?  This is the worst Christmas ever!

Gets a laugh every time.  Well, maybe not from Mary and Joseph Incomparable (who should be rightfully lauded for putting their own beaming visages on the Incomparable Family 2013 Christmas card, for a change, and not torturing me with their ill-behaved vicious attack dogs!).

It is with this Worst Christmas Ever spirit that I found myself having to blow up my original plans for this Christmas Week post.  I was all set to borrow heavily from Mariah Carey's hit Christmas single "All I Want For Christmas Is You" and run with my Dear Santa letter in which I had planned to re-work the lyrics into "All I Want For Christmas Is Choo."  However, news arrived this past weekend that Shin-Soo Choo signed an infinite-year/bazillion-dollar contract with Dubya's Texas Rangers and with that crushed the yuletide spirit out of Reds fans throughout Reds Country.

Consigning those original blog plans to the circular file, my attention turned to the weather.  OK, I'm stretching here, but I need a segue into my recent photos.  Humor me.  Just go with it.

Any hope for a white Christmas at The Ranch in 2013 was quite literally washed away by the weekend-long torrential downpour that deluged Reily Township.  In a matter of hours the acres of snow blanketing The Ranch melted away and I suddenly found myself the proud owner of ocean-front, rain forest property:

In the backyard, the scene was more astounding as The West 40 liquified before my very eyes:

It may be hard to discern from the Android-sourced photo above, but at center (above) the old well filled up and overflowed.  [Until the late 1960s The Ranch was supplied only by a well, but that was before my lifetime.]  If you look closely, you might see that leading away from the well, diagonally down and to the left corner of the photo, a never-before-seen stream appeared and served to drain excess rainwater out of the overflowing well.  And if you re-examine the photo above, you might also observe that the lower right corner of the photo - depicting a small slope that runs downhill towards the viewer - is more water than grass/soil.  I suppose that upon us all a little rain must fall, but this was getting ridiculous and it certainly doesn't put one in the Christmas spirit.  For this, I had to find a remedy:

A drive through the Pyramid Hill Christmas lights!

That's more like it!

What's that you say?  The photos are nice but you'd like something more?  Well then, check out the video I shot with my R2 unit!  How ya like me now?

After my Xmas Light drive-by, I went home and put up the ol' Holiday Evergreen Christmas Tree.  First things first, I had to test the lights.  I fired up the 8 million-watt sound system for some seasonal tunes such as this and this and, of course, this.  

It took some effort, but finally I was in full Christmas mode!

Lights please?

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  And, Lo!, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them and they were afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not; for behold I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.....

Merry Christmas!