Halls decked. One creature stirring; not a mouse.

Halls decked. One creature stirring; not a mouse.
I felt like playing around a bit, so I created an animated gif to capture the transformation of this year’s Christmas tree from bare to decorated to twinkling.
To make the animated GIF, I used the web-based tool Picasion.com. Note: before I created the gif, I reduced the size of the original images down to the size I wanted (i used the width of my wordpress theme as the target image width). Then I created the gif w/ Picasion.
Julie took her last final of Fall semester today – and is headed home for the holidays tomorrow. Tonight we went to Painting with a Twist to create a work of art. This is my version. Not bad. A little festive. Probably worth hanging on the wall for a week or two (?) 🙂
Mom and I set up her tree today. It looks nice. I took several photos of it, hoping for one to post here. On this one, the autofocus was a bit whacky. And it turned out blurry. But I like the bokeh effect of the lights. So… this one is the winner.
For inquiring minds: here’s a definition of bokeh on wikipedia
Well, I ended up working all day yesterday, and most of today. An “emergency” set of meetings came up out of the blue. At least I didn’t have to travel to New York to attend in person.
One of my goals for this vacation is to get back on a normal sleep schedule. I would really like it if the sleepy leg syndrome would stay away until at least after 9 or 10pm. As it is, i’ve been falling asleep on the couch early in the evening and getting up at 1 or 2 to offically turn in. This morning, I woke up on the couch about 1 AM. Before I went to bed I checked my email and learned that my uncle in San Antonio, who’s been ill, passed away a few hours earlier. Makes me very sad. But I’m very glad that we had a visit with him recently. On the other end of the happy/sad emotional spectrum, a friend’s first grandchild was born yesterday. Life. Happens. We should enjoy every minute of it while we’re here. And hug those important to us as often as possible.
I peeled myself off the phone at about 3PM and decided to finish decorating the tree. This might actually conclude the hall-decking at our house. If i get the tree decorated, a wreath on the door, a little manger put up, and the stockings hung, I feel like I’ve got most of the bases covered.