Happy The Cat and Happy The Dog are a wonderful part of our Christmas holiday. Long live Happy The Cat and Happy The Dog on the Hallmark Channel.
Marathon.
My husband and I have started our yearly tradition of watching the Christmas episodes of “Bewitched”. There were four Christmas episodes in the eight year run of the show, not counting the “flashback” Christmas episode in season 2.
Tonight we watched “Santa Comes and Stays and Stays and Stays” from season six. This was the first year Dick Sargent played Darrin. The premise is simple; Alice Ghostley’s Esmerelda sneezes up Santa by mistake and he won’t fade away. Mrs. Kravitz screams a lot when she sees elves and Santa doing their thing, Larry Tate has a few belts, and there’s the usual latter half of “Bewitched” frivolity.
Elizabeth Montgomery will always have a very special place in my heart.
This photo is from Season 4’s “Humbug Not To Be Spoken Here”.
Climate.
I realize humans are doing some very awful things to our planet, but 50°F and higher in Chicago the weekend before Christmas is enjoyable.
It’s a shame we’ll pay the price for this weather further down this timeline.
Goals.
I’ve started formulating my goals for 2020. At the end of each year I tend to shy away from the idea of making resolutions, as in my mind calling something a resolution is marking the thought as fleeting. Let’s face it, New Year’s resolutions tend to dissipate by mid January for the majority of folks and while it’s fun to make ourselves feel good by thinking we are orchestrating change, the fact of the matter is I tend to do better when I have goals to achieve.
I am looking forward to achieve some personal goals in 2020. A good share of them are aviation related, but I have other self-improvement and such goals planned for 2020 as well.
I started my goal making progress by reviewing my goals for 2019. I did surprisingly well with what I envisioned a year ago. The biggest was, “trying to fly different airplanes” in a way to get out of my comfort zone of always flying the Piper Cherokee and its brethren. I have thoroughly enjoyed flying the Diamond DA-40s available at Skill Aviation in Waukegan, Illinois this year and I feel like I’m still advancing my aviation skills. I look forward to knocking out a few more ratings in 2020.
I realize as I get older I need to pay more attention to my health. I’m making small strides, three steps forward, two steps back sort of thing, but I hope to enhance that in 2020. I have no desire to buy into the fitness industry and expect magic results from a gym membership. I’m not that trendy.
As long as I can still get an airplane off the ground with me in the pilot’s seat and not worried about dying of a heart attack, I’m good.
Even if I have to go atop a Saturn V.
Coordination.
Only a couple of the terraces on our side of our condo building have Christmas lights or similar decorations. This building down the street from us has seemingly all participated and coordinated the whole all white lights vs multi color lights approach. The designs are different but everyone seems to be thinking along the same line.
The rows of homes along any given street seem to follow a theme, probably in an effort to “do as the neighbors do”. You’ll see a bunch of homes in a row with all white lights on one block and then on another block you’ll see a bunch of home with lights of varying colors. Years ago I heard a discussion around whether this types of lights used were indicative of a socioeconomic status, but I don’t think this holds completely true. If anything I think this would apply more to the inside decorations.
We confuse people as we have multiple trees with multiple approaches to decorations.
Growing up we had the family room, which was decked out in colonial 1970s wallpaper and color scheme. I would decorate a tree with red and white decorations and all red lights. I always enjoyed doing this. In later years the red lights gave up the ghost and the tree was decorated in all white lights.
It was still quite enjoyable.
Debate.
My husband and I watched the debates tonight. I foolishly subjected my Twitter followers to my commentary.
PBS doesn’t handle debates well. I felt like we were cutting to pledge breaks when the candidates took time to drink water. The commentators were stumbling, unlit, and asking idiotic questions.
I’m not a fan of many of the candidates that were on stage tonight. Any one of them would be better than Trump but I didn’t feel a lot of hope.
Honestly, I don’t feel like these debates are productive and I feel like there’s too much chaos between the candidates to ultimately take the country where we need it to go.
Few are speaking to the center. The vast majority of Americans are centrists. I fear all of this super progressive talk is going to scare people away from the polls.
Centering.
I’ve had quite a day at work today. Here’s a rendition of “Linus and Lucy” originally by Vince Guaraldi Trio, performed on the CBC in 2014. The drummer is the percussionist on the original recording, Jerry Granelli.
This is what one would call “loving the moment”.
Seasons Greetings.
I don’t remember anyone getting super worked up about Zayre using “Seasons Greetings” instead of “Merry Christmas” back in 1985. “Seasons Greetings” was a pretty common phrase to be shared back in the day. The TV stations said it, radio stations shared it, other department stores printed it. I remember foil and cardboard decorations from the 60s and 70s that said “Seasons Greetings”. There was no war on Christmas. People weren’t weeping, grandstanding, and being downright surly around the choice to exchange pleasantries during the holiday season.
Why do folks get so worked up about it today?
Maybe I didn’t pay enough attention to the outrage back then. Maybe I pay too much attention to the outrage today.
Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. A Joyous Kwanzaa. Happy Holidays. Seasons Greetings. It’s the thought that counts. Just say what you say with good intent and receive it the way it was intended.
We have more important things to worry about than getting outraged over how someone conveyed good tidings during what should be a very joyous season for all.
