Phoenix rising
posted in Holidays and Festivals, Pop Culture, Sad Stories |I am back in the snowy North, arriving back from the snowy Southwest. But this doesn’t seem to be any different from the rest of the United States: it’s snowy everywhere.
I haven’t felt like writing anything for a week now, and it doesn’t really seem likely to change soon. So, in the meantime, herewith is the tale of the Gingerbread Inferno.
First, we have the original gingerbread house, GH v. 1.0:
There was more: a sleigh…trees…decor on the door…a flagpole. But, as I wrote before, OmegaDad forgot it was sitting in the oven awaiting finishing touches, and he torched the thing accidentally, leaving it looking–as he said–like a classic “home burnt in a California firestorm”:
The back wall had fallen. The roof collapsed. The peppermints had melted into puddles of goo. The candy puffs outlining the walkway had puffed up, like Peeps in a microwave, rather than melting. The M&Ms had split. It was a sad, sad sight.
So OmegaDad and the dotter pulled themselves together, like all fire victims, and rebuilt:
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. We are pulling together various gifties for the dotter and for each other, and having a marathon wrapping session. There is Santa’s present to put together, too, which required just a wee foretaste of Things To Come…the dreaded wrangling the wrappings…as we decided to have a soft pony straddling the package since there was no room for it inside the box. This required de-tangling the beast.
I have written about packaging and Christmas before.
Suffice it to say that I think Amazon.com, Best Buy, Sony, and Microsoft are doing A Good, Good Thing in deciding to nix the ultra packaging in a “frustration-free packaging” initiative. Woot!
More later, I promise.
