Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be. It is just past 1:00 a.m. in "The City."

I absolutely love the holiday season, especially now that I am retired. No schedule, most often no place to be at any specific time, and the chance to pursue activities that I never seemed to find time for when I was working full time. I guess that actually applies to all of the days of the year. What's not to like?

We have a current temperature of 28° as we drop to our overnight low of 26° before the sun rises @ 7:54 a.m. and before it sets nine hours and 20 minutes later @ 5:14 p.m.

We did it, we got our indoor Christmas decorations done yesterday. Well actually, I finished up the tree last night around 10:00 p.m. when I was in my office and noticed that I had forgotten to add my John Wayne and Chicago Cubs' World Series ornaments. I immediately took them down to complete the tree.

I had Mary take some pix of the tree when it was fully adorned yesterday. I love it and the pix, so much so, that I am going to add a series of those pix right now along with some additional ones that I took last night..

This is the ornament we got at the Holland Kerstmarkt.

And this is the tree-topper that we got on a trip to downtown Chicago's Cristkindlmarket several years ago.

The ornament that Adam and Steph brought to us from Germany

Mary's arrangement of Adam's trolley and station.

You just have to have a souvenir of places you've been.

Yours truly and the fur-children enjoying some rest after decorating,

We also accomplished some indoor chores for another week. It seems that there is a never ending supply of the mundane activities of life.

I stopped reading the Grisham book that I was reading. It started to gross me out, not unlike Stephen King's Cujo did many years ago. 

I spent some time using my pulley exerciser last night. That's when I noticed that I hadn't placed the ornaments that I added last night. I am trying to bring back some of the range of motion that I've lost as the pain in my shoulder causes me to self-limit. I have to keep at it several times each day, both before and after surgery. However, after the surgery, I won't be able to do anything for several weeks.

Today, not much is on tap. I promised Mary that I'd make more of her favorite vegan Italian meatballs today. I have no reason not to, so why not? Ciao.