Well, Christmas is over and the new year is just around the corner. It seems just like yesterday that we were all worried about Y2K and the impending apocalypse, and now that was five years ago.

We went to my parents’ house for Christmas. They live in Asheboro, which is centrally located for me, my sister and my mother-in-law. On the way back we almost had an accident as we saw this:

That is a house completely covered in red lights, and the tall pine trees behind it are also covered. It is quite impressive from the road, as this house is set pretty far back from it, yet it captures you attention.

I took Christmas Eve off, and cleaned house in preparation for a visit from my friends John and Susan. I met them in high school, and while we keep in touch via e-mail and telephone, we only manage to get together once every couple of years.

When it happens at Christmas, we engage in a tradition of eating homemade shortbread (usually ginger shortbread) and drinking scotch. This year’s scotch was Scapa, a single malt designed to appeal to non-scotch drinkers. It was pretty good (we drank most of the bottle) although we did dig out the Macallen and Glenmorangie as well.

We stayed up until 3am, and then I got up at 7am to make breakfast (including fresh buttermilk biscuits). I was pretty sleepy most of Christmas Day (full awake only when passing the red house above) and then we got up early on Sunday to head to Wal-Mart for the annual sale on Christmas stuff.

Inspired by the red house guy, I bought quite a bit more lights than I was planning. As I went to check out, Andrea saw a guy filling not one but two shopping carts with lights – red and white.

It was red house guy. Who knows what it will look like next year.

Happy Holidays to all.