Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

I missed yesterday's post. Our son is still ill enough to be out of school, but better. I picked up his homework yesterday, so he's keeping up his studies.

#1 daughter called a few minutes ago. She's got a cold, apparently. Daughters #2 and 3 seem to be doing okay, and my wife isn't admitting any indisposition. Of course, it takes a lot for her to admit that she's not up to doing her job.

Me, I'm hoping that I'm not coming down with a (*sniff* - choo!) cold.

Aside from that, things are fine. I called an employment place in Alexandria yesterday: no job now, but they said that I should call back early next week. Finding a job, when you're a fifty-something, physically impaired guy with mostly clerical, writing, and graphics experience isn't quite a slam-dunk proposition. But, something should come up, sooner or later.

Actually, getting laid off in the spring of 2006 was very handy. All that free time gave me time to get long-overdue hip replacements, have carpal tunnel and 'trigger finger' work done on my wrists and hands.

I spent a lot of time in the shop last year.

More households got their Christmas displays up in the last couple of days. Sauk Centre got those over-the-street garlands up, wreaths on the light poles, and those nice, safe, generic "HAPPY HOLIDAY" signs over Main Street. I've only seen the south one, but I assume the crews got the northern counterpart up, too.

I hope nobody objects to the red and green lights.

That's not as much of a joke as you might think. Fort Collins, Colorado, may not have red and green lights in 2008. The Coloradoan wrote that the city's Holiday Display Task Force wants to limit the city displays to white lights and "secular winter symbols" like snowflakes and icicles.

The Ft. Collins city council voted to keep their discriminatory colored lights, 6-1.

That's probably just as well. If they'd gone to a white-only policy, someone would probably insist on yellow, red, and black lights, too. And the icicles and snowflakes would have to go, since they'd suggest that people whose ancestors came from equatorial regions were unappreciated.

Sorry about that harangue.

Come to think of it, black lights in Christmas displays could be pretty cool: Anybody remember those groovy black light posters, back in the sixties?

Back to Sauk Centre, here's what one household has for a Christmas display, so far.