This Year's Christmas

 "Fire tests gold.  Suffering tests men." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

This year's Christmas was a bit subdued, compared to most of them.  There were not the usual overwhelming number of gifts, nor did we have both grandmas present.  It was pretty quiet, and maybe a bit more reflective than most years at Christmas.  I am OK with that.

I received several practical gifts, and only one gift that was strictly decorative.  Warm clothes are always welcome, and I got some of that.  One thing I received that was very nice was a retractable extension cord reel with really beefy 14 gauge wire.

 

 

Recently the dog pulled the cord loose while running wildly through the garage, breaking the three-way splitter I had it plugged into.  With this thing, I can plug the car in, and not have to worry about tripping over the cord.  The reel also has a handy circuit breaker with a reset button on it.

It has one of those glowing neon bulbs inside to indicate if it has power.

The timer is to start warming up the engine block heater an hour before I go to work.

This will be handy for powering up other items in the garage, such as the hair clippers and when I spring clean with the shop vacuum.

Another useful gift was a cordless jigsaw.  I had recently broken my 1994-vintage saw when it fell out of the storage cabinet.  This one is nice.  Hopefully next year I get a Ridgid circular saw or a multi-tool.

It was a pretty work and preparation filled month right up until Christmas day.  As a result, we didn't really get to watch any Christmas movies.  A couple of days after Christmas, we finally took in a couple of classics.

Christmas Vacation - the kid who plays Rusty is the same actor who plays Leonard in the Big Bang Theory - Johnny Galecki.

Afterwards, we quickly watched A Charlie Brown Christmas and How The Grinch Stole Christmas.  And that's about it before the New Year rolled around.