Got our Christmas cards in the mail today. I'd spent Sunday afternoon writing mine, while ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger worked at the bookstore. She spent Sunday night writing hers, while I stoked a fire that Sunshine was very cross about existing. There's a handful of cards both of us are sending to the same recipients, so we'll get to have a technically fascinating race to see whether one of us beats the other there.
Also we bundled up the presents being sent to my parents and mailed them off. My father told me that he was specifically insisting on no books this year, and then we found on his Amazon wish-list some recently-added books. So maybe this no-books rule is aimed specifically at me, although I would like to point out, I know my father's tastes in nonfiction perfectly. Like, where I find a book about some odd niche subject and he says he hadn't realized he wanted to learn about it. One of the books my father asked for was Podcasting Made Easy, although I failed to ask him why he wanted that. I suppose there's the obvious reason, that he wasn't ready for Podcasting Made Hard, but still. My parents are clearly ready for it, since a while back they had one of those meal-kit delivery subscriptions and every weekly phone call for, like, four months included an interruption where they talked about how great it was.
The other curiosity is my father put watercolor paints and pencils on his wish list. This came from so far out of nowhere we wondered if it was a mistake. I did mention being surprised to see it on his list and he said it's just something he's wanted for years to try out. So, excellent use of a Christmas wish list, there. If this takes off I'll send him one of those How To Draw 50 Popular Comic Strip Characters books, since those feature characters who were popular-ish in the 1950s, right when he was a kid.
Let's get back to wandering around the neighborhood; that's fun, isn't it?
Santa stands guard over a couple of small decorated bushes. One of them seems to have a hat on, but it's part of the nativity scene.
Here's a doorway illuminated with lights, so that as you pass through you transform into a toy, or back to being real, depending on your path.
Another house with its entry ways ringed with lights. Also, apparently, someone using the attic room to keep their clothes in good shape.
Trivia: One of the five barracks built in Trenton to support the French And Indian War still stands intact. Source: New Jersey From Colony To State 1609 - 1789, Richard P McCormick. (It was also used, again by the British, during the Revolutionary War and so is one of the few bits of the Battle of Trenton to be still intact.)
Currently Reading: With Amusement For All: A History of American Popular Culture Since 1830, LeRoy Ashby.
