Day After Christmas: Economic Stimulation, at 50 to 75 Percent Off

Message of the day: Christmas is over. Go back to work.

It snowed all day yesterday, while we were diving into that cornucopia. At least four to five inches, with a lot of wind that blew it into places that had forgotten they were there. So this morning, first had to shovel out the front walks and driveway so we could get the garbage out to the curb. That was important because the garbage was just overflowing, and that was with even sending a lot of the debris of the day up the chimney.

Then we went out to stimulate the economy by taking advantage of struggling retailers putting all their Christmas decorations on sale. I make it a point every year to decorate the house with lots of lights. Don't care if it's not so environmentally-friendly. We conserve a lot throughout the year, what with using electricity off-peak, burning wood rather than gas and limiting automobile travel, so I feel we're a little entitled to a little extra fun at Christmastime. So we bought lots of lights. Lots of lights, to make up for the ones I had to throw away last year and didn't replace.

We also got a new Christmas tree, on a fire sale price at Ace Hardware. Got a $280 tree, pre-lit, for for $70. Michelle could have flown home she was so happy with it. So that makes everything right with the world. We gave the Ace guy a pretty good scare though. The tree we bought was a display model that was in no way going to fit back into the box it came in. So we loaded part of the tree up in a cart, and he followed with the rest in a box. I parked the cart by a very small car next to the van so I could clear the kids out of the way, and he thought we were going to try to cram the tree into that tiny car. That gave us all a pretty good laugh.

Except that when we got home we had to clean the snow off the back porch and sidewalks so we could get the new tree out to the shed for storage. Got everything done, even two loads of firewood up to the house, except getting the tree stowed. Will do that tomorrow.

Busy now trying to get the itouch set up. You know, it was a nice gift and all from Michelle's parents, but I was just feeling good that I'd gotten Michelle an ipod, catching up with the rest of the world, now we have this new toy to jigger with. Have been connected to the Internet for the past two hours now, downloading the new software for the itouch. Giving Steve Jobs more money. You know, the genius that Apple fired and then re-hired. You'll have to see the Simpsons video. I'll try to find it on YouTube. But have been too busy trying to get the itouch connected to our wifi. Now I can have three devices connected to the Internet at the same time. Michelle will be rolling her eyes for sure.