— पांच हजार नौ सौ बीस —
I'm close to taken aback by the response I've gotten so far to my
mobile Christmas Tree this year, which I did as a sort of compromise with the decision not to hang Christmas lights on the windows this year. The building is still completely encased in scaffolding for the building repair project; the fix for wood rot around one of our balcony doors still needs completion; one of our windows was supposed to be fitted with one that does not open and they put in one that does, and they have confirmed they will need to return to switch it out again. There's no set timeline on any of this, but the potential for some or all of it to happen in December, and it just seemed best to keep any strings of Christmas lights out of the way, which people wouldn't even be able to see from outside on the street through the scaffolding anyway.
I had already used
the cart I bought as a Christmas present in 2023 to haul up the boxed Christmas Tree and other decorations from the storage unit in the parking garage. I don't know why I never thought to do this last year; for years I have taken all the boxes up in stages: moving them all from door to door and then up the elevator and then to the condo. This way I could just wheel them all up at once.
We usually use it for large shopping hauls from Costco. I asked Shobhit if he'd be okay with having no access to it for a month and he had no problem with that. So, I went with setting up the tree inside that cart. I was afraid the base would be too wide for the the cart, but it actually fits perfectly. The only real downside is how much lower the tree is than usual, as I usually stand it on top of one of the cupboard endtables in the living room. Standing it inside the cart, it's much lower to the ground. But, I do love being able to move it from room to room. And Shobhit will bitch about the lights a lot less this year.
I did kind of creatively edit the video, though, taking three separate vide clips of myself that I cut together, pulling the tree from the living room past the nook and guest bathroom and into the main bedroom. You can't see that at all times, it's actually plugged into an outlet via an extension cord—which I moved two different times in between cuts of the video. It's easy to watch that and assume I could just take it right outside and parade it down the street, though, which no fewer than three people have already suggest I do: Gina
on Facebook, Jill
on Threads, and Frank at work this morning, after he arrived and said he had seen my post while riding in on Light Rail. "You're brilliant!" was the first thing he said to me.
This has all made me consider finding a battery power source, but I probably won't. I love the idea of pulling a lit Christmas Tree down the street, but I'd have to come up with a separate, more generic one for that. The tree I have is covered with ornaments that have deep sentimental value to me, and I'd never risk losing or damaging them by parading them on a tree outside.
Even with the limitation of needing to plug it in, I'm still delighted by the flexibility of being able to pull it into whichever room I want to on a whim. I could pull it into the bathroom if I wanted!
— पांच हजार नौ सौ बीस —
— पांच हजार नौ सौ बीस —
I had two DVDs to pick up at the library yesterday, which I did during my lunch break, now that the library is just a few blocks down the street from where I work. I'll watch one of them tonight: the original
Zootopia, which was perfectly timed to become available yesterday, so I can watch that tonight before taking myself to see
Zootopia 2 tomorrow.
Shobhit watched the other one with me last night, while I decorated the tree, having finally found the time to do so amidst all the shit I've been doing since Friday, which would ideally have been the day I had it done. Anyway, the movie was
Christmas in Connecticut, a film that's been on my list to see ever since I found it on multiple "best Christmas movies" lists. It came out in 1945 and holds up relatively well. It has some very bad editing moments but I still enjoyed it, and Shobhit certainly did too. He laughed a lot. I think he enjoyed it even more than I did.
I'd have liked to get to bed earlier than I did, but recording myself with the Christmas tree, editing the video clips together, and adding the music took a bit of time. But totally worth the effort!
— पांच हजार नौ सौ बीस —
That wasn't even the only movie I saw last night! I left work early to see a 4 p.m. showing of
Rental Family with Laney. It was okay. Fine-ish. I settled on a B-minus. A lot more people than I might have expected seem to really like it, but I found it a bit lacking. I think maybe Laney enjoyed it slightly more than I did, but not by a wide margin.
Laney had walked there from home on Broadway, and I met her at the theater. Showtime was 4 p.m. but that was when I left, knowing I had a full half hour before the movie actually started. It was quite cold yesterday, and rather wet last night, so when Laney declared she was going to take the bus home I happily did too. Shobhit had dinner ready when I got home, and I ate, and then spent about an hour writing the review. And the rest is a history of the evening that I already told you!
— पांच हजार नौ सौ बीस —
[posted 12:36pm]
