The best light display I saw this year was at Huntamer Park in Lacey, thanks you City of Lacey for having the courage to do what the Governor could not, celebrate the winter season.  I was bothered and frustrated even by the total lack of holiday lights at the Capitol this year.  There is nothing whatsoever to mark the season until you get right around the state house and there are some very conservative trees decorated.

The notion that not putting up lights will somehow send the message that this Governor is serious about belt tightening is something I'm perplexed about.  Yes, it's hard to justify a few thousand dollars on lights when people are losing their jobs or their kids are losing their health care, yes I get that.  But also there is something more that we are accountable to, which is the notion that we as a people are not dredging around in the bottom 10th percentile all the time and there are still some things worth celebrating.  I guess it's the ideal of the life worth living.  Not putting up lights is not a real savings and it deprives the privileged and under classes of something beautiful, something worth stopping and looking at and being happy about.  I would almost rather the Governor say "yes it's terrible we have no money because you assholes have voted away all taxes, but we STILL will have holiday lights because they are pretty and the make people happy, and they don't cost that much all things considered.".  I would like to have heard that.

In our corner Christmas was modest as we prefer and enjoyable.  Some tension about the whole sharing thing with the 9 year old, but we made peace with pie.  I'm glad the girls don't get wild about a hundred different things they see on television because we don't subscribe to cable television (and haven't for about four years) so they have a very uncomplicated view of the world of consumerism and pop culture.  It will be hard for them at some point, but for now I am happy to bow out of that scene.  Not that they don't spend an incredible amount of hours in front of  plastic screens watching stuff, but so do I.  I even make money at it somehow.

My favorite presents were a pair of slippers that I haven't taken off and a $100 bill with instruction to not spend on groceries but to buy something for me.  I need shoes.  I want new speakers!