{"id":573893892,"date":"2021-12-14T15:47:10","date_gmt":"2021-12-14T20:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573893892"},"modified":"2021-12-14T15:47:10","modified_gmt":"2021-12-14T20:47:10","slug":"alright-monday-lets-do-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2021\/12\/14\/alright-monday-lets-do-this\/","title":{"rendered":"Alright Monday, let&#8217;s do this!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>All caught up? Or just getting behind? That&#8217;s always the question of Mondays. And Fridays. And probably most of the days in between. And at the holidays, well, if you ask that question you&#8217;re just asking for trouble, bub.<\/p>\n<p>You know, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.instagram.com\/kennydsmith\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">over Instagram<\/a>, I&#8217;ve been noting the skies &#8230; this weekend we had some rather delightful surprises. This was the view on Saturday evening.<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/dec21\/dec46.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>And Sunday morning was simply brilliant.<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/dec21\/dec47.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Last night gave us some interesting colors, as well. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/dec21\/dec48.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Today? Also bright and blue. And warmer than you might expect for December. All it took was a light jacket. Now, if it stays more or less like this through March I would not complain at all. I fear we will have less of the more, and more of the less.<\/p>\n<p>Winter makes a boy a bit sardonic, I guess. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/blog\/banners\/bannerarbutus.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>We didn&#8217;t check in on the cats last week because of the hustle and the bustle. We must fix that! Kitties, and my site traffic, demands it! So, here&#8217;s Poseidon, getting wacky with his taco toy.<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/dec21\/dec49.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>And here is Phoebe, not judging him at all for it. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/dec21\/dec50.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>She&#8217;s totally judging him for it. We all do.<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/blog\/banners\/bannerarbutus.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>This is something like a three-episode arc now, I can appreciate the effort that went into that. If you want to know where it is going next, you&#8217;re just going to have to watch.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TVyPPyAIIV8\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the late night crew, which shoots in the late evening. And this is the morning show, which shoots &#8230; in the morning. (Sorry.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Mcoka9M5Lv8\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Which means there&#8217;s should be just one more show to share for the semester. They do go so fast. <\/p>\n<p>He said, about Mondays in December.<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/blog\/banners\/bannerarbutus.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>We put up two Christmas trees. Well, four if you count the exterior sentry trees. No ornaments anywhere, just lights, because of the cats. We thought about soft ornaments for a moment, until we looked around at all of their toys on the floor. That, we decided, would be confusing for everyone. So a lot of lights. And the shine nicely.<\/p>\n<p>Except one of the trees had a strand with a problem and the top third of the tree was unlit. For a few days I thought we should say it&#8217;s a regional tradition. This evening, however, I decided to try to solve the mystery of modern electricity. <\/p>\n<p>We didn&#8217;t check the lights before hanging them on the tree, you see, so the thing had to be unwound and on and on. Ultimately, I just decided to find some more lights, so I climbed into the attic and found a great big ball of lights, which commenced the great trials known to all who hang Christmas lights.<\/p>\n<p>Some 25 minutes later the knot was undone, and in the meantime I&#8217;d brainstormed two new ways to store lights that wouldn&#8217;t avoid tangles, wondered how weird it&#8217;d really look in May if I left the trees up year-round, and also just thought about buying new lights every year. <\/p>\n<p>Christmas lights, I figured, have to be near the height of American consumerism. <\/p>\n<p>When I got the extra lights untangled I found that both ends refused to light, but the middle was delightful. I pulled five bulbs from the old set and got the whole thing to shine. We strung those lights, not with care, but in a haphazard fashion. <\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s not a bright resolution to this little story, but now I have this other long string of lights, some of which work. And I wonder if I should just pull all the bulbs out and save them for the future, or find out how many on that string need replacing. <\/p>\n<p>I could always look on Pinterest for ideas about using half a string of lights.<\/p>\n<p>Yep. There are posts about that. You might say they are &#8230; enlightening. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All caught up? Or just getting behind? That&#8217;s always the question of Mondays. And Fridays. And probably most of the days in between. And at the holidays, well, if you ask that question you&#8217;re just asking for trouble, bub. You know, over Instagram, I&#8217;ve been noting the skies &#8230; this weekend we had some rather [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,3,10,76,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573893892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iu","category-monday","category-photo","category-television","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573893892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573893892"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573893892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573893896,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573893892\/revisions\/573893896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573893892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573893892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573893892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}