There is no Christmas shopping done. I think we've just about given up this year. My only enthusiasm for this holiday so far is for it to be over. Of the bazillion lights we bought last year to put outside, we've hung exactly zero.
I think we blew through our Christmas enthusiasm on the weekend after Thanksgiving when we went tree shopping, couldn't find the usual place, and ended up with a decent but pre-cut tree. I wasn't home when Berta and the kids decorated both trees this year. The one in the family room still isn't done being decorated, I think. And thinking about it now, I wonder if I'm going to have the stamina for two trees worth of holiday.
To accompany the live tree in the living room we're getting new furniture on Tuesday. A loveseat. Some form of seating has been on order from somewhere or other since September, and is only now arriving. Note that this is only half of the pieces that were ordered. Some kind of leather chair is yet to have a delivery date. ...
I used to live near a paper mill. Several of them. Some of my family worked there, including my grandfather and my uncle Joe (my grandmother's sister's husband). Both my grandfather and Uncle Joe were in the Navy, and they plied their skills at tying knots to their new trade in the private sector.
Perhaps it is not widely imagined how paper is processed by a mill. Actually, all of the paper mills in Downingtown are recycled paper plants. They don't use cut trees to make paper, just old paper and cardboard. The paper is put into a big vat of chemicals to help break it down and re-form it into pulp, then it's pressed out through some machinery to be flattened and dried. The resulting paper can be any thickness, and can be used to construct many things, like boxes for board games, french fry containers, or inch-thick concrete pillar molds.
When flat, cut stock comes off the line, it's often stacked in piles and wrapped in cellophane. Prior and in addition to this method of keeping the paper from flying all over the place, the paper was tied together with string. If you've ever tried to tie a knot around something box-shaped, you know the standard difficulties. Now try imagining that the string has to be tight enough to withstand shipment and that the box isn't a solid object, but many thousands of shifting pieces of paper or cardboard. Then, perhaps, the benefit of such a specific knot becomes apparent....
