Friday, November 30, 2007

Month Discrimination

I realized today that I must hate November because I totally refused to blog during the entire month. It wasn't a bad month, I'm not sure why I unconsciously avoided blogging about it. We must have had an argument once and now I'm having trouble forgiving November for all the things it said about me. Forgiveness is a hard thing to dish out sometimes, I guess.

Well, to sum up November, it started getting cold for a while. And then it warmed up until we could wear short sleeves in the middle of the day. And then it got really cold again. One of the warm parts was Thanksgiving. It wasn't really cold at all on that day, and it was nice and sunny. We had a big dinner that night with two turkeys someone collected the weekend before in Wuhan, lots of homemade pies, various stuffings and gravies, more rolls than I ever imagined could possible fit in one room, and (of course) Chinese food. Since there were at least 70 people at the dinner, it took quite a while to get everyone through the line for turkey and western dishes. But I did manage to snag two pieces of pecan pie since I don't imagine we'll have any more of that this year. Unless someone mails us more karo syrup and pecans! Feel free.

Last night, to celebrate the last day of November and to bring in the Christmas season at full swing, Jessica came up with the idea of chopping down a real, live Christmas tree. She won't settle for a fake tree and none of the plant markets in town plan of having Christmas trees this year. It's a tradition in her family for them to all go out together and get a tree, kind of like the Griswald family Christmas or something. So she scouted a tree on the hill behind us and then we waited for dark to settle before we set out. Lacking a hatchet or saw, Jessica brought along her trusty kitchen cleaver to do the chopping. I just went along to provide light with my cell phone and to witness the possible hilarity. Nothing too out of the ordinary happened other than us chopping down a small pine tree in the middle of the night with a kitchen knife and nonchalantly carrying it back to our apartment building.



William and me sitting around before the caper. He didn't actually go, he stayed behind to keep our escape route clear. i.e. - fall asleep on the couch.



My cell phone in one hand and the cleaver in the other, Jessica is ready to lay into that tree. It was pitch dark out and we really couldn't see anything at all. The camera flash about burned our eyeballs out of their sockets.



After getting the tree, Zoe was trying to chop my head off.



Angelyn and Jessica were psyched about this tree. If you'll notice, the trunk is bristling with trillions of little death spikes. I didn't notice that in the dark, but luckily I didn't close my hand all the way on the tree.



I had fun whacking other trees with the cleaver. It cut into them better than I expected!



The finished product was a bonafide Charlie Brown Christmas tree. I'm considering getting one for my own apartment, except that it'll be dead in a week. Maybe I'll wait until the holiday is closer.

And that brings us to today. Today is December 1. It was in the city news last week that everyone was turning on their heat today, and sure enough when I woke up this morning there was hot water in the radiator pipes. I don't know if it's regulated by the city because it's such a large energy investment, but I think it's funny that the city decides when everyone in town gets hot radiators. It's good that they turned it on when they did, though. Today I woke up and it was a brisk 30 degrees out. That's -1 for you celsius people. I think right now it's up to about 47. The forecast for the rest of the week is a bit colder, so it looks like winter is finally here to stay.

2 comments:

Vail said...

That's a pretty scraggly tree but those can be the best kind!! Have a happy happy holiday!

Anonymous said...

Boooo!

I was going to leave a comment of "December at last" on your "October at last" thread, but you had to ruin my fun. November hater!

Jesse