to paul from grandma, 1972

to paul from grandma, 1972, originally uploaded by pr9000.

That's an ornament my Grandma Ruth got my first Christmas.

When we were home for Christmas last week, I loved to look at Mom's tree -- It's cool that she puts up so many sentimental ornaments every year ... there were some others I found that I'd forgotten about, such as "Black Santa" -- a Santa ornament made on dark wood; whoever made it didn't paint his face, so St. Nick appears to be Shaft at Christmas. There's also "Camel Claus," which is one of those little triangular things with two wiggly toy eyes -- if you pinch his cheeks, his mouth opens up, and you can put a Hershey's Kiss inside. Except my dad put in a cigarette one year, and it made my sister, Beth, just explode with anger.

, originally uploaded by pr9000.

Mom always decorates the mantle; those two alabaster angels were made by her sister/my aunt Evelyn when I was in middle school. Mom used to go off and do her Christmas shopping, and leave me in charge of Beth. I'd grab the little Lego space men and turn off all the lights in the house except the mantle and the tree, and I'd pretend that my living room was a huge space dock for the USS Enterprise. I still get a small urge to buy some Lego space men around Thanksgiving ...

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Right now we're a TV-less household, as we told DirecTV to shove it earlier today after the latest customer service screwup with our DVR. We demanded to be released from our contract, which (to their credit) they did with little resistance. Only then did we think "What will our alternative be?" -- which is not exactly Negotiating 101, but hey, you do things in the heat of the moment and you live with the consequences.

After some research, we decided that the local cable monopoly can suck our collective ... uh, toes ... and we went with Dish Network. They seem to be giving away HD packages right now, which is very nice -- we can get the same channels, almost the same DVR packages, free HBO for three months, and only pay about 70 percent of what we were giving those assholes at DirecTV.

I'll miss the NFL Sunday Ticket next year; I can only hope Sen. Specter (R-PA) continues to rattle the NFL's cage sufficiently to allow the league to let everyone sell the Sunday Hit O' the Crackpipe.

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, originally uploaded by pr9000.

These Christmas shots were taken with my D70, and I've finally started to explore settings beyond the "Auto" dial. I'm having more fun with the camera now.