Outta Space.

The Once-in-a-While

Daily News

1  It's still Novembering in my wayward eyes.

2  Is it just me or is everybody decorating WAY too early for Christmas?

3  It's sorta fun though, especially with all the Beebeez.

4  I decorated. Sort of. I do stuff with light lasers. I don't like going up high ladders anymore, so I turn those things straight up and they light the trees. 

5  Right now I think I got overzealous. I think I bought around six of those things last year and tried to make it look like I hadn't.

6  Fortunately, Helene knows how to do window stuff, and how to lay out mantels with leaves, lights, and holiday stockings. Decorative stuff. 

7  I'm thinking of getting a Christmas wreath, or perhaps a small tree just so I could enjoy the smell. I'm thinking of going Hallmark. Just for ducks. 

8  It's funny, because EVERY Hallmark Christmas movie involves a couple of writers, a young man, and a young woman, who live in some small town up in the mountains, and absolutely EVERYBODY in town hangs out at the local Christmas tree farm. This is always a place where everybody in town dresses warm, wears colorful scarves, and sips hot cocoa. Later in the movie, they will decide to go to the ice rink, where one writer can skate and the other can't. 

9  They also have the tree-lighting ceremony at some point, and a scene involving a snow globe. Around 900 of them have D.J. Tanner in them. 

10  And they all look like cookie-cutter copies of all the other Hallmark Christmas movies.

11

12  And we sucker for these things every year.

13  And I always find myself watching these, and hollering, "Who watches this stuff???"

14  And I always find myself an hour-and-a-half later shouting, "TELL HER!!!"

15  Yup.

16  Here.

17  Have a Christmas dog, dressed like a reindeer:

18  It sleighs me.

19

20  Sorry.

21  Just feeling a little frivolous. 

22  So frivolous that I decided to bring in some final Novembering pictures before this fuddle of Christmas overwhelms me, and it will. So here, have a little more November before you get swallowed up:

23  Pssssssssst. I have a shameless confession to make.

24  I went back into a DN from almost exactly a year ago and grabbed the above pictures.

25  I didn't take any of 'em. 

26  I just wanted to bring in a last fit of November before all is lost. 

27  Plus I was daydreaming while writing because the Kings were beating the Warriors in the fourth. Items 28 on down were written Monday night when the Sacramento Kings beat the Golden State Warriors. Allow us all to hold hands and time travel. It can be done.

 Ready: Here go, the end of the game, brought to you live. I slanted the fonts so that you'll know. 

28  I thought I could pun it up for a bit until the Kings eventually lose.

29  On the other hand, there's a real possibility that they could win.

30  Nah.

31  No chance. 

32  I'm going to go slumming for some more old pictures from last year. It was fun finding those. 

33  Know what I came back with, after time-travelling (Chiefly British spelling)?

34  This. I plucked it from the past, just now:

Me and Simon.

35  I KNOW. I KNOW. 

36  Why Simon?

37  Well. I don't recall the exact origin of this, but I noticed over the years whenever Ponch and I would go to a restaurant and they would ask our name, he would always say, "Simon."

38  Made perfect sense to me.

39  I had forgotten about that picture. We were at a Giants' game, possibly the only one we ever went to together. 

40  Holy sh!t! The Kings are going to beat the Warriors. Bogdanovich scores, and it is Sacramento 110, Golden State 106!

41  There will be rioting in the streets here in Sacramento, and you got it live. I'm glad I loafed it on this DN so I could squeeze that game in, even though it happened on Monday night. 

42  I'm a Warriors' fan, but this is really something. First time since March of 2013, and they beat the Warriors in Oakland. 

43  Granted, the Warriors had two major players not playing, but still. 

44  Frank Mason baby. Remember the name. 

45  Yes, I said that seriously. 

Frank Mason.

46  AnywayZ...That's it for time travel. Notice the fonts are normal again.  It is now the present. It is now Wednesday, November 29, 2017. Dust it off. Time travel is easy, and it is fine. You just have to bathe afterward. 

47  I gottago. It was fun travelling (Chiefly British spelling) with you, but it is breakfast time. I need to ethereal. 

Get it?

Ah, Deej! We luv ya, man!

48  See you again. I mean it this time. 

49  And as always:

50  Live life.

51  Love life.

52  Peace. 

~H~

fin.

Li'l Isla Bean

The Once-in-a-While

Daily News

1  Happy almost Thanksgiving.

2  I thought that perhaps it had already come and gone.

3  Things barely occurred to me until we got Coley and Matt all set up in their new home, which is about a quarter-of-a

mile from our house.

4  We spent most of this past weekend getting them over there. On Sunday night, we had the first of hopefully many more parties over there. 

5  We had an In-n-Out feast which included both Li'l Jack AND Rocky, the Wonder Dog. 

6  Had a bunch of fun, but the real holiday season began when we came back over to our place and popped in the neo-classic Christmas movie Elf. I pulled myself into place in my beat-up La-Z-Boy chair which I have affectionately deemed Le Luge, and got ready to have a few laughs. 

7  For whatever reason, I enjoyed watching that film just because. It was almost as though watching that film officially

launched the holiday season.  

8  I'm not sure why. It may have been the soundtrack, which simply ran the show. It may have been Will Ferrell finally not being Will Ferrell to me, or it may have been my finally accepting Ed Asner as a real Santa. 

9  I opened my mind to those deep concepts, overlooked any nonsense, and jumped into all the trimmings and trappings of a nonsense Christmas movie.

10  And I chuckled. 

11  There's an enormous difference between laughing, and chuckling, you know.

12  I like chuckling because it is cuter. Maren is beginning to say, "So cute!" about nearly everything, but she says it, and the room breaks into smiles.

13  Isla's job is to look pretty. She does a darned good job of it. Here:

"She SO cute!"---Maren, of her sister

Isla, above. 

14  Ain't it the truth.

15  <sigh>

16  Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

17  I'm still off in another universe. 

18  Too much going on, and I suddenly turn around and Thanksgiving has lifted my wallet.

19  There are worse things.

20  Thanksgiving Eve. My Thanksgiving resolution was to learn all the lyrics to Moana. 

21  I missed the boat on that one.

22  I love Maui's flow. It's no mystery that the voice busting that rhyme is The Rock. The formula, as they say, works. 

23  But Thanksgiving Eve. Been writing this since Sunday, which rolled right into Monday night.

24  Monday night pumped me up.

25  We did a lot of house-hopping, but we finally landed at Matt and Coley's.

26  They were all unloading boxes, cleaning the dust off stuff, and getting things into the right rooms. They even staged a few things, which was fun.

27  To help out, I hooked up my laptop so that they could watch a DVD. They popped on Christmas Vacation. That movie knocked me out.

Don't do it!

28  Literally. I collapsed in the afternoon and slept through the entire thing. Pretty sure I didn't miss anything because we probably watched that one about three times last year.

29  AnywayZ...

30  Juggling so much stuff. 

31  It seems that everyone is juggling too much stuff this year.

32  Must be something in the air.

Li'l Maren. So cute!

33  Might be Jack Frost nipping at our collective noses.

Li'l Jack, the Builder.

34  Or it might just be real life trying constantly to get each one of us into a vice-grip.

35  Be thankful.

36  I know that sounds shallow. I know that the REAL Thanksgiving is shameful.

37  I never quite know how to handle that one, so I won't.

38  But when I see my own family moving within a few blocks of each other, and all of the little backaches, knee-aches, headaches, and butt-aches creaking through all of us, I guess I'm just thankful to be alive.

39  These are the good ol' days, make no mistake. I KNOW a lot of people are going through a lot of pain and stress. But there are still these nice moments that assure all of us that there is something bigger out there. 

40  The other night when all the babies were here, I looked up from Le Luge and saw rainbows coming from a sort of crystal hummingbird feeder in the yard. They magically appeared and proceeded to dance around the fireplace. 

41  They danced and laughed in perfect rhythm with the noises of the children, and I smiled. The babies, in the meantime, were squealing with delight, knocking one another down, and sharing the miracle of a newly discovered dead beetle.

42  They had to. And I had to smile. 

43  Because like it or not, the hootin' and hollerin' holla' days are here!

44  We all deal with it differently. I'm aware of that.

45  Maybe it is because I've seen a lot of people going through pain this year. Maybe it is because the White House insists on saber-rattling and idiocy. Or maybe it is because we all know deep down that we have to cherish our children, and on and on.

46  So.

47  Find someone, and lift a glass. Even if you are lifting a glass to the mirror. You earned it. 

48  I think it is a year really to give thanks, and to celebrate our very survival.

49  That spirit lives in all of us.

50  Embrace it.

51  These can be the good ol' days, if you open your heart.

52  Gottago.

53   See you again. 

54  Have a GREAT Thanksgiving, and then get ready for more.

55  And, as always...

56  Live life.

57  Love life.

52   Peace.

~H~

fin.