Ringing in the Yuletide: The Many Days of Christmas, Day One

For several years, we've toyed with the idea of juggling the holidays a bit and celebrating our Christmas on a date other than 12/25. When you have relatives living in three different states, that can make enjoying the holidays with each group--as well as having time for ourselves--a daunting bit of scheduling wizardry.

Because we have young nieces and nephews on each side of the family, too, that means we're almost certainly on the road come Christmas Day itself--and now that Beth is working her petsitting business, she's of course got many a booking for the most traditional of celebratory dates.

One date that always appealed to both of us was the Winter Solstice. Our wedding anniversary is exactly six months earlier, on the Summer Solstice (most years, anyway), and after all, the holiday season predates Christian times significantly: most civilizations throughout history have marked the longest night of the year and the coming of longer days with celebration. (Don't forget that based on the Bible, Jesus' birth would not have been remotely near December 25th--all Bill O'Reilly's protests aside, it's a historical fact that the Christian church set the date of Christmas deliberately to coincide with existing "pagan" celebrations like Yule and Saturnalia, so how about we put the Saturn back in Saturnalia for a change?)

So we made 12/21 our day of "Collation," which is a ritual Beth's family brought to the holidays based in some sort of Catholic tradition. Collation includes an evening (usually Christmas Eve) of feasting, for us usually hors d'oeuvres such as my Carta di Musica crispy flatbread and various cheeses accompanied by some wine and a few snackable sweets. Both my family and Beth's also have a practice of getting a Christmas Eve present (an "early" in the Foutz/Bottom family canon) or two, so we decided to exchange a few of our gifts on the Winter Solstice in addition to the meal.

Of course, the Papillons always love gifts and couldn't quite understand that the presents exchanged were for us and not them; they were understandably interested in each package we chose to open.

The evening's gifts included a new burr coffee grinder for Beth (the "coffee slut" if you believe the t-shirt I gave her a couple of Christmases ago), along with a beautiful handmade clay owl I bought from one of my favorite stores in the Denver airport, Colorado Collection--the latter in and of itself a holiday tradition going on five or six years now for me. (In fact, I made a trip connecting through Denver in November entirely so that I could visit the shop for this year's gifts!) Beth gave me a book on fairy houses for our garden, along with a more practical gift in the form of a pocket-lined bedskirt to get our shoes and the like in order.

We've left plenty more gifts for each other for the days to come, as we do indeed expect to celebrate the many days (if not twelve) of Christmas this year.

Nightmares of a White Christmas (Or: John's Mad Winter Driving Skills Save Some Kitties)

As I mentioned in my previous post, our area got hammered by snow yesterday: over a 24 hour period, Mother Nature and Jack Frost dumped on us to the tune of 21 inches. Normally, that would have been a great time to hunker down and just enjoy some hot chili, a cup of 'nog, and perhaps a Hot Buttered Rum or two. Unfortunately, Beth had a petsitting appointment, and her client was a diabetic cat who needed insulin injections. Thus began a day of adventuring and nightmares of a White (pre-)Christmas.

So I got up at the unholy hour of 5:00am and helped Beth shovel out her car for her morning visit, when we had "only" about eight inches of snow on the ground. Her Mini seemed to drive okay on our cul-de-sac, so expecting the main roads to have been plowed, Beth headed out to the kitty's house without further incident.

This "winter wonderland" quickly turned into a nightmare for anyone traveling in the Washington, D.C., area as another 8-10 inches of snow fell between Beth's morning and evening visits. In my sleep-deprived state in the pre-dawn gloom (with thoughts of the warm, toasty bed awaiting me), I didn't think to tell Beth not to park behind me when she came back...

That led to much shoveling, and not just of the driveway itself this time, as we had to shovel out a space for her to back her car into so that I could pull out around her and switch the order of our cars. Beth thought I was getting a bit of an early start when I went out at 3:00 pm to start digging us out (for the third time that day, I might add--I can't imagine how awful the shoveling would have been had we not invested time and effort earlier in the day each time our tracks and trenches filled in).

Oh, those oh-so-clever Germans; Beth's Mini (a brand owned by BMW) wouldn't engage power to the wheels at all, since their "we know BETTER than YOU!" computers (intoned in a decent Sgt. Schultz impression--and probably should have echoed the Hogan's Heroes patsy's infamous words disclaiming all knowledge as well, if you ask me...) decided the tires wouldn't have traction. I took over behind the wheel and imposed my will on the Mini and got it to at last back out of our driveway, then got my car out of the way and hers back into the drive before it could ice up and the temporarily-cowed German Engineering would reassert its authority.

It's now almost dark, by the way, and closing in on 5:00pm. It took an hour and a half to dig out the cars (and this was after I'd cleared the driveway twice already in the day) and transpose their positions. I turned on my fog lights just to be able to see the snow drifts, because from watching a hapless Ford Explorer try to make it out of the cul-de-sac once already only to fail and fetch up on the curb about 50 feet away, I knew we had to stick to Beth's set of tracks from her morning excursion if we were to have any hope.

Let me pause for a moment to say that I know how to drive in icy, wintry conditions. That puts me in the distinct minority, I'll have you know. From growing up in mountainous southern West Virginia to going to college in the Appalachian plateau in Blacksburg, I had plenty of practice. Winter driving is something that I enjoy, so long as all the idiots who don't know how to drive stay out of my way and off the roads. I drove my '93 Chevy Cavalier home through a blizzard on more than one occasion, so my Subaru Forester XT and its all-wheel drive (and more ground clearance than a Ford Explorer, or so the commercials say in a bit of real truth in advertising) would be a pleasure in comparison.

Pre-driving prep, beyond shoveling, included me packing a set of dry clothes and socks (shoveling in knee-deep snow will tend to soak you a bit), loading some food in a box of Town House crackers (we hadn't time to pause for dinner), and loading the bags of concrete mix which had sat sheltered on our stoop since Halloween--the latter for the added weight of a couple hundred pounds and some thus-improved traction--and our snow shovel. One thing we missed, though: the jumper cables I'd pulled out of storage. More on that in a bit.

Getting out of the cul-de-sac was definitely an adventure. I got stuck at least three times--largely due to the Explorer having messed up the ruts I'd planned to drive through and then fetching up to create a narrow funnel I had to navigate through without sliding into it or the car directly across from it, and we had to get out and shovel free the wheels (followed by much "rocking" on my part: shifting to drive, moving up a bit, then shifting to reverse, and moving back a bit, until we worked free). On one occasion, our neighbors gave us a good push as well to surmount one of the humps of snow the hapless Explorer had made across Beth's morning tracks. Byrd Drive wasn't that much better, but Beth's morning ruts had been widened by at least a few more cars, and from there, it was simply a matter of slow-but-steady in 2nd gear to clear the neighborhood and get to the main roads. As we neared the neighborhood entrance, things improved as more cars had been out and about.

We decided to take the same roundabout course I'd suggested to Beth that morning: 29 (Lee Highway) to 123 (Chain Bridge Road) to 7 (Lessburg Pike) and into her client's neighborhood out near Wolf Trap via the back way--but thus taking major roads the whole way and staying off such perils as Hunter Mill Road. The ramp from Main St. in Fairfax over to Lee Highway had not been plowed, and we got stuck there, too, as we had to yield to a passing plow and thus lose all momentum to push through. A truck had come up right on my tail, making rocking free a bit of a chore, but we did manage to make it onto the relatively-plowed Lee without having to get out and dig.

What I found amazing at 5:30pm was how many other cars were out and about--many driven by total idiots who figured putting on their hazards and going 3 mph would suffice to get them through the mess. What was more amazing, though, were the pedestrians.

Yes, pedestrians. Walking in the middle of a main highway.

And not out because their cars were stranded and stuck, no. Not out because of a life-or-death emergency. Some were out clearly just to see the sights...

... and others were out for a BEER RUN. Indeed, one group walking three astride in the smack-dab center of Chain Bridge Road (123) were carrying a case of Budweiser, mission accomplished from a trip to the convenience store at the foot of the hill.

Three astride pedestrians who refused to get out of my way as I had to drive up a hill in the snow. I was about to lay into them with the horn when I was finally able to get around on one side without losing traction and without plowing down these moronic dopes out for no better reason than to get sloshed. I wish I had time to grab my camera and document this moment for posterity--but I was more concerned with focusing on my driving and not plowing down these goobers.

The pedestrians continued the whole way up 123 as it became Maple Avenue in Vienna; I had to slow and squint and swerve as many folks apparently thought it a good idea to be out after dark in a dark blue coat and black snow pants and walk in the middle of a main road. As I finally got to the ramp onto Route 7 out near Tyson's Corner, I breathed a sigh of relief: surely there would be less pedestrians to encounter on that highway.

And, indeed, I was right: getting to the kitties' house took us a good 45 more minutes of me driving 25-30 mph tops (some morons in pickup trucks whizzed by me at 45 or more--fishtail central, eh?; some morons lazed along at 5 mph and refused to pull toward the side to let us pass). But no more pedestrians. Just windows that at full blast from the heat managed to fog up, wipers whose blades picked started to ice and lose their effectiveness...

Arriving at the kitties' house found the neighborhood road plowed, but only narrowly, and with the driveway 30" deep in snow--it came up over my knees when I got out, and almost to Beth's waist as she furrowed up the front walk--so I stayed in the car in case I needed to move out of someone's way. Mission accomplished, we set out back out of the neighborhood and for home, with my executive decision to head farther west on Rt. 7 to pick up the Fairfax County Parkway and then US 50 for the trip home instead of chancing another bevy of drunk and wanna-be-drunk pedestrians in Vienna.

As I pulled up to the intersection with the Leesburg Pike, my antilock brake light came on. Knowing I needed my brakes to function and hoping it was merely a fault brought on by snow buildup around the tires (the sculpted "mud flap" area behind the tires which looks so nice serves quite poorly in trapping snow thrown up by the wheels), I made a terrible mistake: I turned off the ignition to see if restarting would reset the brakes.

Here's where things took a turn for the worse: my battery is nearly 6 years old, and I'd been intending to replace it at Costco or Sam's Club several times already leading into winter--but had not had time to stop at either. Running the front & rear wipers, the wiper deicers, the rear window defogger, the fog lights, the head lamps, and the mirror defoggers had taxed the battery's reserves, and my car engine turned over once and started clicking.

Dead battery! I turned everything off (should have to begin with, in retrospect) and gave it a minute, then tried again. The engine turned over twice but didn't start. Great.

Several people stopped to ask if we needed help; one clearly Muslim family in a SUV (I only mention this due to all the negative press Muslims get) offered me a hat and gloves (my hat was in the car; I'd gotten out for just a moment without it, and I'd taken off my gloves to be able to use my cell phone)--what great holiday spirit! Unfortunately, no one had jumper cables with them, and as I said earlier, though I prepared by packing a change of clothes, shovels, and extra weight in the car, I had left the jumpers at home.

Worse, our curbside assistance with our insurance and with Subaru both said it would be 2-3 hours before they could get anyone out to give us a jump. Beth walked back to the kitties' house to look for jumper cables there while I stayed with the car and used Google to track down and call several tow companies, and had to argue with several receptionists that no, all I needed was a jump, and my alternator was fine, my charging system A-OK, that it was just an old battery and my stupidity of running all the electrical systems, until I at last found one who said they'd be able to make it in 45 minutes, for the low, low price of $65.

This is when I discovered I had left my wallet at home.

Beth had fortunately left her purse in the car, so I read off the credit card # to the company and settled in to wait.

About 30 minutes later, a young man in a compact car stopped to ask if everything was OK; I explained (as I had already about 6 or 7 times to others) that I had a dead battery and needed a jump--and this time, unlike the rest, the kid said, "Sure thing!" He pulled up beside me and in short order, the Exerda was up and running again.

MAJOR thanks to this unknown Virginia Tech senior (I noticed his commuter pass; he noticed my plates, and we chatted shop a bit about school) who had jumpers with him and stopped to help a stranded driver. If you're out there: THANK YOU! (As an interesting aside, this senior with a minor in chemistry had the same thing to say about "German Engineering" as I did, mentioning out of the blue that such cars simply wouldn't drive in this weather due to the electronics deciding they know better...).

A quick call to cancel the tow truck and a drive back to the kitties' house (about a quarter of a mile or so) to pick up Beth, and we were on our way again, delayed only an hour and a half or so in total.

This is when things got more interesting.

Tabitha, my GPS, wanted to route us on several back roads which I'd traveled before and knew would absolutely not work--so I drove past them on Route 7 and kept heading northwest, out of my way a bit but with the goal of a main road. We turned down one which was slated to take us onto the Reston Parkway and thus down to Route 50 about two miles from home... and came upon two cars parked side-by-side in the middle of the road, blocking it, and a third parked behind them with his hazards on.

Now, why would you park next to another car on a plowed street, blocking the whole road, when there was enough room to park on one side and only one side and still let people by? We got out to check on the cars and see what the deal was; that's how we found out the one gent had been waiting 30 minutes. He claimed we should go over the median--even said, "I'm a teacher; follow me and see how it's done..." and then proceeded to sit in place, confusing us as to whether we should try going around him, too, or whether he did intend to lead & "teach."

(My mad winter driving skills need no tutelage, let me just pause to say.)

In the meantime, a pickup came up behind, passed us, laid into his horn at the parked cars (one of which had people in it--and was running idly there, oblivious to the traffic building behind him). This truck cut between the parked cars, somehow, and then made tracks cutting over the median to head back the other way. Before we could follow, another pickup pulled up, this one blocking the path we'd been about to take. Cursing the idiocy afoot, we got ready to hit the horn, when finally the new arrival moved on, and we were able to slowly mount the tracks the first truck had made.

We decided to go back to Route 7 and head a bit farther west yet, to get to the Fairfax County Parkway (as I'd originally thought to do, Tabitha be damned). That turned out to be a good decision, as there were few cars to be encountered, no pedestrians, and no one stopped in the middle of the road--though several had fetched up in the median earlier in the day from what we could tell!

As we came back around to our neighborhood--50 is a straight shot onto Main Street at the 50 & 29 intersection, saving us having to cross any berms of snow piled across intersections due to plowing--we found the adventure still not yet complete.

Byrd was blocked by a tow truck working to free a stuck car. Fine, we'll just back up to go down Del Rio and come up San Carlos, then, to get to our cul-de-sac that way. Problem was, someone had parked their car in the dead center of Del Rio, right between two other parked cars on the sides of the street, put on their hazards, and disappeared. Totally blocking the street: all they had to do was pull up 15 feet, and we (and other traffic) could have gone around.

We started to take another side road, but the ruts of earlier traffic didn't look passable, and I sure as heck wasn't going to contribute my car to the street-blocking idiots who'd abandoned theirs, stuck. Fortunately, by the time I backed up Del Rio, the tow truck had gotten free, though all the pedestrians who'd been out to help now walked in the same tracks we needed to be driving in. Argh!

At last, we reached our cul-de-sac at the back of the neighborhood, and started into it. My car slid a little, so I had to let up on the gas to avoid driving right into the cars parked at the mouth of the street. That meant digging and more rocking, as of course I was then stuck.

Finally, then, at 9:30pm and a good 5.5 hours after we'd left, we were home, safe and sound.

I'm just glad I (1) have a car which can drive in this weather; (2) have mad winter driving skills honed by much practice; (3) was able to drive Beth to her appointment--there's no way she'd have been able to do it on her own, even in my car.

It was an exhilarating, frustrating, fun, worrisome trip out and back, and quite the adventure when all was said and done.

Winter Wonderland: The D.C. Area's Record-Setting Snow

I'm pretty used to calls for incredible snow and winter weather going off like a wet firecracker--a fairly common occurrence for the Washington, D.C., area--so when forecasters initially projected the potential for record-setting snow this weekend, I took their claims with more than the FDA's daily recommended dose of salt.

I took the afternoon of the 18th off from work so that I could get some handmade presents finished up in time to deliver to family in Lynchburg. Imagine my shock that apparently everyone else in the Washington area had also taken off early: in stopping at Safeway for some groceries for our planned Yuletide feast, I had to search the parking lot for a cart (even the cart returns were empty), and lines for checkout stretched almost to the back of the store. Seeing as how I wanted milk to make some homemade Nolly 'Nog, I was happy to discover the frantic pre-blizzard shoppers had not cleaned out all the proverbial bread and milk yet.

So fast forward to 11:00pm on the 18th; the snow had started around nine, and after two hours, didn't look like all that much. The long-exposure photo (above) taken from my home office window shows the back yard shortly before I went to bed.

I got up with Beth at 5:00am on the 19th; she had a diabetic cat petsitting client who needed an insulin shot, and I went outside to help dig out her car. At that point, we had about 6-7 inches of snow on the ground, but Beth tried her car and found it drivable, so once we got the drive and walk shoveled clear, I bid her a safe trip and went back to bed for a couple more hours (cell phone at the bedside in case I would be needed to rescue her).

Another long-exposure photo (above) taken in the pre-dawn cold and gloom shows my car still covered in snow, with Beth on her way to her kitty client--whose owners were due to fly back to National later in the day.

A week or so ago we got the first snow of the season, an incredibly wet and heavy batch which wreaked a merry path of havoc over the plants we'd interred in our yard with such care over the spring and into the fall. That snow bent one trunk of our river birch all the way to the ground (the tree had yet to shed all of its leaves, leaving that trunk vulnerable to collecting snow and ice); I think it pulled through once I rescued it. Our front yard hollies likewise had been weighed down and then frozen to the ground by the treacherous, wet slush.

You can imagine my dismay then when I spoke to my sister Erika (in Lynchburg, VA) before our snow even started and took her report of "huge, wet snowflakes." After digging Beth's car out on Saturday morning, then, I spent a while rescuing the hollies from the weight of so much snow. A few branches and stems had been broken, but I am hopeful the plants pulled through on the whole--though several are still completely buried beneath the snowfall, like the little male pollinator holly.

The doggies absolutely loved the snow, as they always do. Even th0ugh it was deeper than the Papillons are tall, they bounded out the side door into the yard, and Didi made a beeline (or a bunny-hop line?) straight for where her ball lay buried beneath several inches of snow. Beth followed behind with the snow shovel, clearing a deeper trench for the boys to follow. I don't know how Didi knew so accurately where in all that mess of white her ball was, but it was hilarious watching her furiously excavate around it. (Yes, she can actually carry that big yellow ball around, too.) Above, you can see her proudly demanding her Daddi throw her ball.

The back yard birds weren't as thrilled by the weather, though they did put in such appearances in abundance that we had to refill the feeders twice during the day. We had avian visitors from the normal flocks of juncos and sparrows of various ilk to Pileated Woodpeckers, crows, and jays.

For Beth's evening petsitting visit, I knew she wouldn't even make it out of the neighborhood in her car. Problem was, she'd parked behind me when she got home in the morning. So that meant shoveling enough space to back her car out of the way--as well as clearing a path for mine, too; the snow was so deep it left even SUVs designed for offroading struggling to make it up our cul-de-sac. The snow had continued all day, leaving an additional 8 inches or so of snow atop Beth's car, and we had to go out for the third time that day to clear the walk (no mail ever came though--I don't blame the mail for not running, though don't they say something about "Neither rain nor snow..." and all that?) and the driveway.

The trip out to petsit for the diabetic kitty client was an adventure in and of itself, which I'll post about shortly in another entry.

We ended the day around 9:30pm with flurries still falling and the yard clocking in at 21 inches of snow in the flat areas, and drifts well over 30 inches deep in several places.

Another Welcome Return Visitor: The Pileated Woodpecker

After multiple visits per day last spring, our resident Pileated Woodpecker vanished. We couldn't imagine a hawk or cat had gotten him; Pileateds are, after all, the size of a crow and pretty intimidating birds (secretly, I feared a kid with a BB gun or even a McMansion owner on the other side of the park had mistakenly taken a shotgun to him, blaming the big woodpecker for damage to homes and trees). But we neither saw nor heard the Pileated or the female we'd seen with him a couple of times after May.

A couple of days ago, I thought I might have heard a Pileated back in the woods; I wasn't sure at first and decided it could have been a Northern Flicker. However, today we got confirmation that the Pileated had returned when I spotted first a female sitting atop a seed feeder (and that is a bit odd--the woodpecker was actually eating seeds), then the male on the big suet feeder across the yard.

We're really happy to see that the Pileateds made it through the summer and fall okay and are looking forward to having them back in the yard at Chateau Papillon again!

One Step Forward--Hopefully NO Steps Back

Washington, D.C., joined the list of states which have legalized same-sex marriage with a council vote (please, no quibbling over the fact D.C. is a district and not a state) and the assured signature of Mayor Fenty. The District, which had previously authorized recognition of gay marriages performed elsewhere, now only has to wait out a 30-day Congressional review period--and fend off court challenges from the bigots who are demanding another shot at tyranny of the masses via a referendum (did they all flunk Civics 101 and the fact we have a representational democracy?).

Fortunately, it does not seem likely that Congress and the President will get involved; beyond the fact that Democrats control both, the matter is one of self-determination for the District. (Before we celebrate too much, do consider that Congress unanimously voted to override the dignity of that poor woman in Florida, a silly, unconstitutional cause which stirred President Bush into taking an emergency flight back to Washington from his Crawford ranch.) Court challenges are likely, but given that this was a legitimate act by an elected, representative government--and an act which has been upheld by the courts at every stage so far--it also seems unlikely the bigots will win via an appeal to the judiciary.

Speaking of bigots, check out "activist" Bob King from the article linked above:

"God's war has just started," Bob King, a community activist who lives in Northeast, said a few minutes after the vote. "Shame on them. We're going to get to the ballot box through either the courts or the Congress. So tell everyone: Don't let the marriage licenses start flowing."

"God's war?" I'm sorry, but like so many of the American Taliban, not only did Mr. King sit out the part of Civics class that taught about representation, he missed the whole First Amendment bit about not mixing church and state.

If there is a god (or goddess, or pantheon of deities), surely he or she has something better to do than keep two loving people apart. And those who would worship under the aegis of religion most assuredly should have higher priorities for a holy war: things like achieving world peace, stemming hunger and poverty, and working to ease suffering and illness. From a Christian perspective, there are far more--I'd wager an order of magnitude, at least!--commandments and guidances to do good and sacrifice one's earthly possessions for the betterment of one's brothers and even sworn enemies than there are condemnations of homosexuality. (The strongest Biblical basis for being anti-gay aren't even strictly scriptural; they're in St. Paul's various epistolary books.)

Yet while it's apparently a primary mission in life for many of these bigots to shout about homosexuality, stomping around and waving signs at protests and bringing wasteful lawsuits and demanding ballot initiatives, they don't seem to be much bothered by wearing clothes of two fabrics, working on Sunday, people playing football (yes, this violates Leviticus 11:7-8--a football is a pigskin, after all) or building up worldly wealth. I suggest a look at the Rev. Mel White's take on what the Bible says about homosexuality, as well as a thorough reading of the Bible itself for those who claim they have God on their side here. What it comes down to is that their religion is used as a crutch to justify their prejudices, not as a real basis for those beliefs.

It still amazes me that there are people who do not see the parallel between the bigotry of the civil rights era--say, opposing interracial marriage, which was in fact illegal at the time!--and what is happening today. Or (and perhaps I'm being a bit unfair) opponents of gay marriage also oppose interracial marriage.

It also amazes me to hear people talk about the "sanctity of marriage" somehow being damaged. Although this is not surprisingly ignorant of most of world history--during which polygamy was the norm, not "one man, one woman"--as well as the Christian Bible itself (explain Solomon, I ask you), what gets me is that no one seems able to really explain how they would be harmed by someone else's marriage. Are their own relationships so weak and flawed that they cower in complete fear of their own marriage collapsing around them? Sad, little minds, I have to say. As a heterosexual, married male, neither someone else's sexuality nor their chance at wedding someone they love bothers me in the least, and certainly doesn't threaten my own marriage.

Fortunately, though, for the moment there is a bit of good news on the fight for equality. With all the setbacks seen over the past couple of years, supporters of gay rights will take what victories they can get.

Decking the Halls, Part 2: The White Tree

Though the week after Thanksgiving kept both Beth and me pretty busy with the gifts we were making (one of which I'd sworn to finish early enough to avoid having to pay expedited processing and express shipping fees on...), we did get back into the holiday decorating mood come the weekend.

For our second Christmas tree, we pulled out one which we hadn't gotten a chance to use since either 2003 or 2004: the white tree. I'd picked this one up several years ago at Wal-Mart on Boxing Day (when I used to brave the crowds to snatch up deeply-discounted wrapping paper, light sets, and other leftover holiday goodies), and it's been a family favorite ever since. Even our kitties loved the tree; I have photos somewhere of Moon and Neptune both perched within its branches at my townhouse in Blacksburg.

Problem is, it's massive. Though "only" a 6.5' tall tree, it's really rather wide at the base, and in our pre-decluttered days at Chateau Papillon, we simply didn't have the space to put it up. We started to put this one in our library, where the colors would work well with the teal walls and natural-tone bookshelves, but after playing the game of matching branch tip colors to the sockets on the pole, it was pretty clear the tree just wouldn't fit in the Libris Lepidoptera. Even moving it up into one of the corners and thus blocking access to several shelves of books didn't do much good; the tree simply dominated the space, with its size seeming to halve the room.

We debated several alternate locations for the tree before settling on the dining room, where we'd placed an even older (and much more slender) tree last year in one corner. After rearranging the dining room table and cleaning up several boxes of junk that had been piled next to the china cupboard for an entire year, we had the space we needed.

A few years ago, I had picked up several sets of blue LED lights after Christmas, intended for this tree but used for the first time this year. Like the Hokie Tree, several sets of colored C7s and C9s gave way to energy-efficient LEDs, and personally, I like the intense blue and white colors better than the blue incandescents we'd used previously (though that leaves us with an entire box of blue lights in need of new homes... Goodwill or Freecycle, anyone?).

Next up: a tree for the library; I found a nice, skinny black tree on Wal-Mart's Web site which we're trying to track down in stores.

Spreading Goodwill to All (Or, How to De-clutter and Clean Out Storage)

Way back in November--the weekend of the VT-NC State game, in fact--Beth and I traveled down to Blacksburg and cleaned out our storage unit, which I'd had in some way, shape, or form since about 1996. For one, we didn't really want to pay the nearly-$50/month in rent any more. For another, we wanted several items in storage, including my dryer (since the one that came with Chateau Papillon has a bad habit of eating clothes, you can probably see why) and some of our Christmas decorations, among other things.

One problem: Chateau Papillon is chock full of our stuff already! We make many donations to Goodwill every year, and despite a genetic heritage of packratism (you should have seen my grandmother's "utility room"), in recent years I had really moved toward de-cluttering. Most of that stuff had been in storage for at least five years, after all; if we could do without it for that long, ought we not be able to do without it entirely?

As Beth was booked to the gills with petsitting, she couldn't come down Saturday, whereas I definitely wanted to go to the game and also pay a visit to my favorite wine store, Vintage Cellar. Since we knew we needed a rental truck for the dryer and some other large items, we really couldn't bring two separate cars down--so I indulged in my most-traveled air route, albeit one I hadn't made since 2006 or so: Washington to Roanoke, thanks to a United "e-fare" deal which cost me around $100 total. After watching the Hokies pummel the Wolfpack and catching up with friends, it was time to get to serious work.

Emptying our storage unit did take some time. Beth arrived Sunday morning; I met her in Roanoke, where I returned my rental car and picked up the truck (and had the misfortune of driving past a Sarah Palin book signing, I might add). Once back in Blacksburg, we started loading the truck and . through the various stuff we'd accumulated.

In addition to two entire carloads of stuff we tossed out entirely, we took a half of a U-Haul to Goodwill in Christiansburg, dropping off there my bachelor coffee table and end-table sets along with a large dorm fridge Beth had rounded up "dumpster diving" on campus and which I'd always intended to turn into a "keg-erator" and several large bins of clothes and household goods. That still left us a good half a truckload of stuff to haul back to northern Virginia and Chateau Papillon (a lot of it because we were running short on daylight and time and thus didn't have a chance to sort through it or make another load to Goodwill before they closed for the day).

We have subsequently made three more large carloads of donations to Goodwill, including some really good stuff which we simply didn't need (such as many strands of Christmas lights--we've gone almost entirely LED now), a few interesting museum pieces (an Apple IIe and a Sega Master System console), and admittedly, some junk, too (though one never knows quite what another will consider treasure...).

On top of that, we've filled two 65 gallon recycling bins with scrap paper and cardboard I culled from old boxes of stuff... and unfortunately still filled a few trash cans as well with things I just couldn't justify giving to Goodwill and for which I knew there was no way to freecycle or recycle.

In addition to the tax benefits we receive for the donations, we're glad to keep as many things out of the dumpster and landfills as we can, and in the process provide items which can be sold at low cost by groups like Goodwill in their thrift stores--including a few things I'd have been thrilled to discover hidden amidst the dusty, mothball-scented prom dresses and pajamas of secondhand-shop shelves. So if you find that Apple IIe out there in a Goodwill store, you can thank us for it...