It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like . . . the 4th of July

Or maybe Halloween. Certainly not Christmas. It was in the 80s over the weekend. Christmas is predicted to be somewhere in the 70s. Even for this part of Alta California that's a bit unseasonal, although not unprecedented. We never get a white Christmas but it is at least a sweater-worthy time of the year. Not this year. I'll be off shortly to do some practicing in the park: short sleeve shirt and a straw hat to keep off the sun.

Oh, yes, and the decorations are up. But calling some of them "Christmas" decorations may be stretching a point. Mary and I walk around the neighborhood most evenings for about an hour. It's a three mile walk, more or less, depending on the route. The decorations get odder every year. Most are still just lights or nativity scenes or Santa and his reindeer. But at least one household on our route thinks that nothing says Christmas like a 10 foot tall, illuminated, inflatable squarebob spongepants, or whatever its name is. Another house also had an even taller illuminated inflatable Homer Simpson. But at least Homer had a santa suit of sorts.

And the most amazing thing about it all is that I love it. I love the little house with just the Christmas tree in the window and the other house with the clamjamfrey of mismatched Christmas stuff, all in plastic: snowmen and two different sized Rudolphs and, unaccountably, the three wise men but no nativity scene. And even the giant inflated cartoon characters. I know I'm supposed to harrumph at everything except nativity scenes. (And I do; but that's largely because harrumphing is fun, too.) But it's still wonderful. Inexplicably wonderful.