My spouse and I set up and decorated our Christmas tree a few days ago.\u00a0 It is one of those pre-lighted deals — I had thought this would make the process easier, year-to-year.\u00a0 This is the tree’s seventh Christmas.<\/p>\n
When we set up the tree last year, I found a dead segment of lights that I spent an hour or more troubleshooting.\u00a0 I finally yielded to my frustration and contacted the manufacturer’s chat support line, but it was ultimately to no avail.\u00a0 Our tree turned out to be too old to fix.<\/p>\n
Solution?\u00a0 I went to the CVS down the street and bought another string of lights.\u00a0 Adding foreign lights to a pre-lighted tree sort of felt like fitting it with a prosthetic.\u00a0 But it worked.<\/p>\n
Which brings us to this Christmas — and another segment of tree lights that elected to die.\u00a0 Only this time, I spent zero hours troubleshooting the problem.\u00a0 I went directly to the CVS down the street and bought a couple more strings of lights.\u00a0 Happy tree, happy life.<\/p>\n
Lesson learned: it is just not worth it to buy pre-lighted trees and I will never do so again.\u00a0 They are a pain-in-the-arse to troubleshoot, and it’s much easier to add a string or two of $4.99 lights than to painstakingly pry out and replace bulb after bulb in a pre-lighted tree to find the culprit.\u00a0 Sorry, Balsam Hill.<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\u00a0<\/p>\n
In an effort to get re-engaged in my neighborhood, I have volunteered to be a member of our so-called Erosion Committee.\u00a0<\/em> This purpose of the committee is to look at the risks to our mountainside development should we get 5 inches of rain in 24 hours.\u00a0 This is not an unusual proposition in these parts, given climate change and hurricane tracks.\u00a0 We, as a neighborhood, have woken up and hope to avoid the tragic fate of the Champlain Towers<\/a> in Surfside, Florida, where community denial, diffusion of responsibility and slow action led to destruction and death.<\/p>\n One couple who lived — and perished — on the seventh floor of the tower that collapsed had just bought a home in our neighborhood.\u00a0 We can see it out our living-room window.\u00a0 Those folks would have been neighbors of ours in the spring.<\/p>\n We need to protect our neighborhoods, if we can.\u00a0 But not just with defensive measures.\u00a0 We need to rethink how we live, what we consume and how that contributes to the threat.<\/p>\n \u2022 \u2022 \u2022\u00a0<\/p>\n I have decided to take a break from the blog for a while.\u00a0 I need some time off to improve my attitude and refresh my perspective — I think there’s a string of neurons up there with a burned-out bulb in the middle.\u00a0 So while I troubleshoot, may we all have a great holiday, and I’ll see you next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My spouse and I set up and decorated our Christmas tree a few days ago.\u00a0 It is one of those pre-lighted deals — I had thought this would make the process easier, year-to-year.\u00a0 This is the tree’s seventh Christmas. When … Continue reading