More Memories of Christmases Past

I was able to boot up the old desk top earlier this afternoon and email myself some older photos off my hard-drive from Christmases past - still can't get a stable webpage established though, DRAT.  And I could not find my flash drive either so I could not begin to transfer files from the old desk top to the newest Acer laptop.  Now, I wonder, did the old desk top somehow arrange for that flash drive to disappear???...

2008 Christmas tree

I experimented in 2008 with putting the tree in the corner of the living room nearer the fireplace rather than front-and-center in the big living room window.  What was I thinking?  It was okay, but lacked dramatic impact.  But, as that year Mr. Don and I travelled on Christmas Eve Day to Las Vegas for a whirlwind visit with 'Sis and Michelle, we did not have much time with the tree.

We lit the fire one evening and got giddy on liquored-up egg nog and spent over an hour telling each other silly stories in various made-up "foreign" accents, each building on the last, using our writers' imaginations to the max.  Okay, so we're nuts!  It was funny! 


Isis at work in her 50's style kitchen :)

'Sis cooked for us 2008 Christmas Day - I remember home made lasagna but there was lots of other food too -   ate way too much.  The day started out fine, sunny and bright.  It was windy but nowhere near freezing cold (not like what we'd left behind in Milwaukee, a ton of snow and sub-freezing temperatures).  We spent some time out doors, in fact, enjoying the winter garden and the vistas of the golf course that backs onto 'Sis's back yard.  But while we watched Christmas movies and chatted away (and ate and ate and ate...), the weather turned.  During the afternoon it poured buckets of rain and the winds whipped the rains against the house, pounding and pounding.
 
Here is 'Sis in the kitchen at the Las Vegas homestead.  The kitchen is a perfect 1950's era gem - and it still has the original built-in oven (not shown in this photo), which I used to make some "easy beef burgundy" when I visited 'Sis and Michelle in April, 2010.


Me, Caesar's Palace, Christmas Eve, 2008.

 There's me!  Not seen are the birds (sparrows and birds of paradise) I was throwing crackers and assorted nut treats to, on the extensive grounds of Caesar's Palace, Christmas Eve Day, 2008.  The fountains were going and it was beautiful.  This photo was taken around dusk.  Later on we walked down to the Sahara and back (anyone who has done it knows it is quite a hike from where we were staying, at the Imperial Palace) and we stopped at the 50% off kiosk near the Riviera and the Peppermill Restaurant (where we have enjoyed quite hearty breakfasts at reasonable prices) and got tickets for a Christmas Evening showing of  "Phantom."  As you can see, it was warm enough to go without gloves, hat and boots, a real treat for me!  I wish I didn't look so much like a stuffed sausage in my winter coat with layers on underneath.  Oh well.







2007 Christmas tree

 I was quite pleased with how the 2007 tree turned out.  I took several photos of it, this is probably the clearest one :) 

You'll be able to tell by comparing the photos over the years that I moved the curio cabinet (I had it in my first house, purchased in 1986) out of that corner after Christmas 2007.  I rearranged my various collections on the shelves after relocating it next to the wall that fronts the staircase.

I'm still puzzling over what to use as a tree topper, though.  Those who follow this blog know how I pondered over the question a few weeks ago :)  Oh well. This tree had a bare top, as did all of them up until 2009, when I put together two of the large golden pointsettia picks and I thought that worked well, but then that left large "holes" in the body of the tree.

So, I need to get a new tree (not gonna happen, I'm too attached to this one and it's not that old!) or I need to get more ornaments (a distinct possibility, given the more than 50% off sales that will take place tomorrow and, since the weather is good, I'll probably head out to the local mall for a little shopping) and/or some more large floral picks from which to construct a tree-topper.  I don't want an angel, Santa or a star. Well, maybe a star, if it was a really special star.  A Goddess would be cool, but I haven't found any Goddess tree toppers.  This year, though it really can't be seen, I tossed up a rope of pearls, and gold beads, and a golden ribbon, and stashed lots of small size ornaments all around.  Live, it works really well.  In photos, meh - doesn't really show up. 



Christmas 2006

 I don't have any photos of my 2006 tree, but I do have this -- I fed Mr. Don much wine, and Godiva chocolates non-stop, and we played chess (nearly always drawn games, and win/loss records equal as far as I recall).  The chess set was a gift from a former colleague who is a wonderful person. I'd worked with him for some 12 years and we had developed one of those really special relationships where we didn't even have to talk to each other to know what we were thinking; all we had to do was look at each other and we just knew. We were great colleagues and friends - I had his back and he had mine - but our personal lives we kept pretty much private from each other.  It wasn't until our later years that we began to open up to each other a little bit and we actually talked about many things other than our current cases.  In 1998 especially we spent long hours together working on many work-out deals, many times rushing Fedex packages to the airport before the 9:30 p.m. cut-off for delivery the next day.  Email in those days was not yet being used as a standard delivery method for legal documents as it is now...  His going away gift was precious to me because I knew he went through the trouble of finding a very nice gift for me to say "good bye" when the time came, this man who, really, knew nothing about chess, only that it was important to me. 

It is a replica of one of the Lewis chess sets.  He gave me a lovely handcrafted wooden board too, but for our games Mr. Don and I used a board that Sis hand-made in 2006.  It was one of the first she made, it has a special monogram on it for Goddesschess and holds special memories. 

This isn't an actual photo of a game in progress  (but it could be, Mr. Don and I really don't know what the hell we're doing on the chess board), but the circumstances, surroundings and items are all as stated above.  I would like to get him to Milwaukee to play in one of the Hales Corners Challenges, bwwwwwhhhhaaaaaaa (she laughed evilly....)