Anyway, I'm trying not to let that dampen my own celebration too much. She's now in the "I don't want to eat anything; just let me sleep" phase now that the Pepto is doing its thing, so I've been reading a book (via our traditional "open one present on Christmas Eve" thing) and listening to Christmas music from Pandora. I'll probably have leftover Chinese for dinner and count myself fortunate that I haven't also succumbed to whatever she's got, at least not on Christmas.
Abyway, here's a little holiday cheer:
I always have this thought myself. An enlarged heart is sign of heart failure, and that's bad. Poor Grinch.
A beaver who wants a Christmas tree?
Pigloos!
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The import of laying baby Jesus to rest, wrapped in swaddling clothes, in a manger. Real-world foreshadowing.
A very interesting explanation of what sort of structure was actually the setting for the nativity. Wish I'd read that article last week, before I wrote my Christmas vignette....
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Conditions are gradually improving for all mankind which is something to celebrate.
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This Christmas is more like 1982 than 1978 and I'm just as happy about it.
This was the front yard after that blizzard:
Yep! 55° outside and sunny--thank you!
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XKCD has a Christmas funny today:
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The stretch of days without sunspots has ended with two Cycle 25 sunspots popping up on the Sun's surface. 277 days in 2019 without sunspots. It's not a foregone conclusion that there won't be more spotless days, but sunspots tend to last a while, and with about a week left in the year that 277 is probably going to be the number for 2019.
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So, discovered two things about the train set in rapid succession: first, that the original oval featured just two 10" straight sections after all. I don't know where I got the idea that there were more than that, but after watching the video from 2013 of the train's first running, I realized my error.
Second, with the additional four 10" sections I bought, the layout is big enough to properly go around a Christmas tree. I think next year I will buy more track, because I know I'll be buying another rail car for the set, and it'll be nice to keep expanding it year after year that way.
I actually thought about setting up a permanent layout downstairs, in fact, but that's probably another one of my pipe dreams. There's not enough room down there as it is, for everything I'd like to do; adding a train layout is probably beyond the pale.
Fun to dream, though.
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Everyone have a merry Christmas!
