Tradition

Hooray, it's Christmas time again. Mark is in the living room right now decorating the tree. I was in there for a while watching football, but I got tired of Mark constantly stepping in front of the television, and singing Christmas carols off key.

When I was a kid we never went with my dad to pick out the tree. That was a financial thing to him, and kids would only get in the way of the deal. The deal being that when he found the cheapest place to buy the cheapest tree, that was the day our Christmas tree would suddenly show up. Kids would only gum up the works, demanding something large, and nice looking. Mark and I have begun our own tradition surrounding the buying of the tree. We call our friend Russell, who works for Home Depot, and find out when the truck is coming in with fresh trees. We then zip over to the Depot right after the trees are unloaded, and while Mark wanders around making the Home Depot guy hold up each and every tree so he can compare, I go inside and wander around. When Mark has finally picked out his tree, he brings the tag in to me, and I pay for it. Not quite like slogging through the snow to chop down a fresh tree, but a tradition none the less.

By the way, I did help Mark with the Christmas tree. I carried it in from the car, placed it in the stand, and crawled around on the floor tightening down the large bolts that hold the damn thing upright. It only took five tries, accompanied by profuse cursing, to get the thing to stand up straight and true. Look for the video of that, courtesy of Mark, on Thursday.