Our Lady of the Pagan Symbol of the Season

Five days without a post is a long time for me, and even though I don't have much to report, I thought I might check in and show off the tree as promised [I think I promised that]. Of course, the pictures are from my phone, which means the quality is pretty much crap, and you don't get to see a lot of the little touches. The tree isn't real, and is fairly old [it belonged to my Mom's mother before my Dad's mom got it], so it can't hold a lot of weight without limbs slipping out of their well-worn holders in the middle support, and the decorations I used are probably more often employed on a smaller sized tree, like one of those desk, or store window models.

The heaviest things are homemade icicles, made over the years by my grandmother, and various other members of the family using pipe cleaners and clear beads. The details I'm particularly fond of are the little wooden apples [I have no idea why, but having apples hanging from the branches of a pine tree make me smile -- I've said it before, but it's just so odd and absurd], and the big snow-flake looking things are actually little picture frames made of plastic and yarn, each one holding a picture of either the children of the family, most of us at some earlier time in our lives, or those who've died, and left us behind.

Unlit.

I grew up in a craft-oriented family, which is probably why places like etsy.com and the like have always interested me. I wasn't blessed with any of that kind of skill, however, and still struggle to cut a straight line with a sharp pair of scissors, a fact that all the gift-wrapping around this season tends to remind me of. But the items the generation before mine [and the generation before that] put such care and nimble-fingered work into have held up remarkably well, so my case of stupid fingers isn't quite so heartbreaking.

Lit.

Second Christmas without Dad... I went ahead and mentioned casually he should probably get a space on the tree now too. Last year seemed too soon, this year seems too soon, honestly, but it has to be done eventually, and among all the stars I'd found someone who had two, so we didn't even need to put a new one together [not even sure if that would be an option at this point].

Anyway. On to other business. Ander and I got an e-mail from Eric, saying very complimentary things about our comic [re: A Change is Gonna Come] and confirming our spot in "Normal." It was very vindicating hearing from someone else that the spark we were feeling while working on the project really was there like we thought. Haven't got much chance to work on the other script Ander gave me the idea for [re: VHS Generation], but that's because the Christmas season has been keeping me far busier than even I expected. And the only writing-related thing I've gotten to work on is this huge crit project for a friend.

Speaking of friends, there's a new "Seth Martin & Friends" short up on YouTube, where the Brain Wrap guys debut the new superhero character SuperUltraMan, which I think you comic-readers will appreciate. So definitely check that out, and support Seth, and Kyle, and the rest of the crew.

I'm trying to get ahead of stuff for this coming week, but I'm not entirely sure how free my schedule will be. And then there's Monday looming where... hopefully... the contest I entered "Nova" in will announce its winners. I picked up a four year old bottle of Australian Chardonnay at the local grocery store [we're talking far from glamorous here, though I've never found anything older than a year or two of any kind of wine on that shelf before], which I will either bust out to celebrate, or barring that, save and have on New Years.

Because it's not jinxing yourself if you're buying it for more than one occasion. Right?