I will admit that I was going to call this “A Weekend With Krampus” but since I was home with The Mrs all day Sunday I thought she might not like that. I did have a great time in Columbus (yeah, I know that’s a weird thing for a U of M grad to say). It was big fun hanging out with Sarah and Anton at The Merry Krampus. Since I got into town on Friday, I decided to check out Fear Columbus’ Krampus themed haunted house. If you are in the Columbus area, you should check it out while it is still open. This partially makes up for not hitting any haunted houses during the Halloween season.
It took three visits, but it seems like we have heat in all corners of the house now. The worst part was that everything was working fine on Friday when I left, but the boiler had completely stopped working by the time The Mrs got home. I did feel a little guilty being in a cosy hotel room while she was at home without heat, but she spent the night curled up in front of the fire with the TV room’s Carrier unit on so she was OK.
Listening To: The Cloisters by Katy Hayes. Damn this is a good book. You know a book is good when I look for housework to do so I have an excuse to keep my headphones on.
Currently Reading: The kind of websites that cater to those who have put off their Christmas shopping until 2 weeks out and are desperate for gift ideas.
Current Obsession: Finding shows I want to watch on the channels we ordered for only a month. We watched The Continental and are currently binging the third season of Resident Alien.
Dragon’s Roost Press News
The big news is that Arkham Institutions is now available! Check out this post for all of the links.
Now that the book is out, we have been working like Arctic elves to get all of the Kickstarter rewards out. All of the paperbacks have been ordered, as have the author’s contributor copies. The water bottles are in hand as are the bags and the tee shirts were just delivered fifteen minutes ago. We will be making a trip to the post office tomorrow to send everything out.
The only reward which is questionable for holiday delivery is the hardcover edition. If anyone was planning on giving it as a present, please contact us and we will send you a certificate with all of the information so the recipient has something in hand on the big day.
As noted above, our last show of the year was a big success. We will be taking a little time off from touring, but we will let you know when we will be out in the world again so you can visit us in person.
This Week’s Rambling: Little Twinkly Lights
One of the things which I did while wearing headphones this week was put up the holiday lights. For some reason people are always surprised to find out that I decorate for holidays other than Halloween. As I have noted before, there are far fewer Christmas decorations than Halloween, but I do have them. And yes, some of the ornaments are, shall we say, Halloween adjacent. I haven’t put them up yet, but I do have the full set of McFarland X-Mas figures as well as plenty of Nightmare Before Christmas material. The Mrs used to work for Hallmark, so I have a slew of Star Wars and Star Trek ornaments.
One of the benefits of The New House(™) is that we have enough space to put up more than one tree. Last year I surprised The Mrs with a small tree (we moved away from real trees due to the clean up involved and the fact that I’m actually allergic to tree sap and the constant itching tended to put a damper on my holiday cheer). As a nice compromise, we have one big tree with the “pretty” traditional ornaments and one with all of my weird shit on it.
There seems to be a divide among people regarding the use of multi-colored lights or clear lights. Personally, I like them both. I even think that they can look good together, if done properly. However, I draw the line at bulb size. For some reason it makes me insane when people have little twinkly lights right next to the ones with giant fist-sized bulbs.
In case you were wondering, I put up big looping strands of the little sparkly lights and a big wreath over the garage. Yes, this involved multiple trips up and down the ladder and it was absolutely awful. Our front porch is guarded by a pair of evergreen bushes which I will add more lights to if I get off my ass in the next couple of days. This afternoon was spent putting up the trees and putting lights up all over the house. I have to go run and turn off of the regular lights so it is nice and pretty when The Mrs walks in.