I mean, look at the reflection off the ceiling!
Unpacking my Christmas junk this year, to say I SAVE EVERYTHING is a freakin' understatement.
I'm the queen of loving the old, ticky-tacky-crappy, ohsoshiny, unloveable stuff. The tackier, the better. The weird shit. I have a collection going back to my childhood, and regularly add to it from estate sales and thrift shops.
Firstly, dig the boxes out of the garage. Ornaments are NEVER stored in the garage, as I love my ornaments almost as much as I do my chickens. This is just the initial holiday layer, anyway. Lights, room decorations, outdoor lights...that kind of stuff.
And are you even a Christmas traditionalist if you don't keep your stuff in 9000 year old, weird boxes that you've been using since the dawn of time itself?
But some things just can't last. This was my beloved tacky-shiny tree topper--don't ask me where I got it, some estate sale years ago. Original 1960's dohickey.
But last year not only did the base break off, but the light strand refused to light (bad wire). I thought about getting a new light strand...but then realized it has ELEVEN lights. Not 12. What monster made this thing with a weird number of lights?! I still may scavenge it for parts, tho--those finger-stabber plastic flower thingeys are too cool, as are the pink light bulbs--not to mention that gold reflector in the middle.
In Target the other day, I round the corner...and low and behold, the successor to tackycrappy tree topper!
And IT'S HUGE. When I saw it I swear I heard angels sing. So right up my alley.
And even better lit.
I may swap out the clear bulbs for colored ones, gotta try it and see how it looks.
Not all joy, though. I had a creeping sense of dread recalling how tired I was last year when taking down the tree, and seemed to recall just shoving things in boxes to be done with it...
AUGH!!!
Yup, ball o' tree lights. Spent a merry fifteen minutes or so grumbling swear words at myself, phrases included 'You dumbshit' and other well-deserved phrases.
By the way, the white lights that have FIVE cords going to each damned light is a giant strand of programmable chaser lights that have all kinds of effects. Surprisingly, once I get the tree decorated that 50 miles or so of white cord hides pretty well.
But the prize of the day from spelunking in the Christmas boxes was for sure this thing, which I had frankly forgotten I'd owned. This was how people did things in 1981 before the days of the sequenced lights so common now. I've never used it.
The D-LITE MODEL 100!
You can tell it's modern, because they boldly put 'Disco' right out there on the front of the box, God help us.
Sweet cover art.
Let's take this ten pound bad boy out of the box, shall we?
All the cords and bits are there...
The back. Note 'Made in Taiwan ROC', which I think Taiwan stopped putting on their products around the time this thing was made. See that double-ended cord with RCA plugs?
Yeah, that's how you're gonna connect it to your stereo.
What? You don't have a stereo, much less one that uses RCA connections?
I do. An 800 pound big ol' Marantz receiver that I love to death. Seriously thinking about wiring this sucker into Christmas this year.
Also note the three H, M, L connections. To see what that's about, let's check the instructions.
Because yup, I got those TOO. And the warranty card, yowzer!
The instruction booklet is about eight pages long, fussy as hell and horribly labor intensive.
One of the first steps is to vandalize this thing and strip the cord down to bare wire so you can ram those wires into the speaker connections on the back of your receiver (this is how you hooked up speakers back in the day). The H, M, L is so you can wire your tree to light up differently in three zones! I mean, who wouldn't want that? But I especially like the part about using this thing with an AM radio. Modern technology, babies!
And yeah, it's not the most powerful thing on the planet. And today's tech is FAR superior.
But think how quaint and antiquated today's tech will be in 40 years.
So Eggroll the Blue-Laced Red Wyandotte rooster is now just shy of 8 months old and stands 2 feet tall. Haven't weighed him lately. I'm kind of afraid to.
His crossbeak seems to have settled down, mostly staying the same right now. We keep it trimmed and it does NOT interfere with his eating.
At all.
He's very sweet and personable, and his BLR colors are gorgeous. And while the little meatwad still resists growing a tail, crowing, or chasing hens he's got one heck of a dinosaur head frill coming in.
So majestic*.
*Nope
