How to Install Christmas Lights

As the holiday season comes to a close, I've chosen to reflect on lessons learned this past year. Important lessons... life shattering really... earth moving.... Installing Christmas lights on your house is easy, yet potentially very dangerous. After a successful installation this year, I've decided to make a step-by-step guide so as to not repeat mistakes made previously.

#1. Buy a house with a flat (or nearly flat roof). All those fancy angles and pitches just make it more dangerous and complicated.

See there? Nice and flat-ish.

#2. If you live alone and/or are installing the lights alone. Call somebody and tell them that you are about to climb on your roof so in case you fall off and break your elbow (or your hiney)someone can come and collect the lump of bones and call your momma.

#3. Get out a nice sturdy ladder.

Or something relatively sturdy that you happen to find under your house when you moved in.

#4. Set it up on a nice even surface.

See those inches of difference and uncertainty? Those won't matter much on the way up, but trust me that they matter a lot on the way down.

#5. Toss all of the equipment up on the roof and get to work.

#6. Make sure you're dressed for the occasion. I opted for sweatpants that unbeknownst to me become plumber pants when crawling around on your roof. I'm sure the neighbors loved it.

#7. Plan a strategy for safely hanging over the edge of your house to affix the lights. I opted not to become an "After School Special" (see item #2). On this lovely flat roof the best thing to do is to lay on your belly with you head towards the gutter and scoot across the roof, dragging your supplies with you. One small side affect- see item #6.

#8. Quickly and efficiently attach the lights to the gutters. Yay awesome gutter clips! This part really was easy, minus the scooting around on your belly part.

#9. Toss all debris from packaging into the front yard.

#10. Safely dismount the roof.

Problematic. However, if you very gingerly sit on the edge of the roof, careful not to sit on the gutters lest they and your newly strung lights go crashing to the ground, you can take your feet and scoot that ladder all over your carport until you manage to make it safe enough-ish not to face plant onto the concrete. You just look like an idiot until that is accomplished.

#11. Enjoy the beautifully decorated house for 30ish days and then repeat the process in reverse. I may consider Judaism from a decorations stand point next year. :)

SEC Football

I started to write a post to try to explain the nuances of Southern College Football. After about 3 pages of rambling about pre-game activities, I realized I had written an epistle and hadn't event made it into the stadium yet. I scrapped that post in favor of a shorter one here...

My favorite thing about college football is the commraderie. Being in a stadium filled with (mostly) like minded fans all cheering for the same fellas is just so much fun. Even when you lose a game, it's still nice to be in the company of friends. At Auburn, we call it the Auburn Family. Though we may be just as dysfunctional as a regular family, I'm proud to call myself a Tiger any day. Try as they might, those football fans outside of the SEC may never truly grasp how serious we take our football down here.

This year, our season tickets were behind a cute little old man and his wife and thier grandson. This man was seriously in his late 70s but he was there every game without fail. He spends about 90% of the game with one finger pointed to the sky reminding Jesus to keep an eye on his Tigers during the game. It is the cutest thing I have ever seen in my entire life. He spends the other 10% attempting to learn to fist-bump is grandson. I'm not sure that he ever nailed that move this season.