(Lack of) Christmas Lights

The City of Grafton didn't do a whole lot of decorating this year because of all the sidewalk construction, but the other folks downtown sure did a good job. The storefronts are Christmas gorgeous and there are plenty of beautiful Christmas trees with high visibility. For instance, the Taylor County Historical Society Museum has a Christmas tree lit up in each of the three lower stories of their turret. Talk about eye-catching! And coming across the bridge (on 119North) into town, Taylor County Supply has their tree where it can't be missed.

We had good intentions. Really, we did.

We wanted to put up at least a simple strand of lights to signify progress and activity at The 123. When we pulled our Christmas decorations out at home, we went through each string of lights and fixed the ones that didn't work. We put up our tree and saved out one string of lights to take to The 123 to hang around the Main St. windows. The lights made it into PC's truck and a few days later, when he stopped down at The 123 to do some more clean-up work, he hung them around the windows. Before he left, he plugged them in.
And they didn't work.
Ugh!
He tried replacing and wiggling light bulbs, but nothing worked.
Another few days went by and he stopped at the dollar store and picked up a small box of mini-lights.
Another day or two and the box made it's way into my car.
Several more days (and several trips to The 123 when I totally forgot about them) went by and I finally got them out of the car and took them into The 123 and promptly forgot about them (duh).
Finally, on Christmas Eve, I unboxed them and hung them around the windows on the same small nails that PC had used for the first strand. The string of lights that I hung up was not hung with the greatest of care -considering the height of the windows, the shortness of myself, and the pile of bagged quickrete that sits on the floor too close to the wall to get a chair in to stand on and too far away to stand on and reach all the way around both windows. What I mean is, they were very far from perfect, but they hung evenly in both windows and I was satisfied and pleased to actually have some sort of decoration up.
When I left, I forgot to turn them on.
So, I went back and plugged them in.
I left, again, pleased with myself for finally turning on the lights.
As I drove away -again- I glanced at the windows and to my dismay only half the light bulbs were lit!
Argh!
I did not stop.
Instead I hope that half a strand of Christmas lights is better than nothing.
And considering the stripped-down state of the soon-to-be-constructed coffee shop, half seemed appropriate.

Rain

Last week we had enough rain that there was some serious -though thankfully short-lived- flooding.
No problems with all the rain at The 123, but click here for a picture of the driveway at our home.

Snow

Remember the volunteer sunflower from this September post? It's still there and PC sent me a picture:

It's looking kinda' drab.

Here's a shot of the west side:

Next winter this will be a warm, welcoming place to come in and wrap your hands around a warm mug of coffee and shake the winter chill. I can't wait!

Heat!

I know you can't feel it, but you can imagine it:

And the cold air return:

Fall Colors

This is the view from the the front door - looking west down Main Street:

Or, more accurately, this was the view on November 18th. Now it's snowing and has been for a couple of days.

Here's another one from the same day standing on the side walk in front of the B&O Caboose: