The Christmas tree’s starting to look pretty brown. We had to buy it several weeks ago because about the only place to get a real Christmas tree around here is from the Boy Scout lot, and they get one shipment of trees at about Thanksgiving. I’m all for being prepared, but that’s a little too prepared for me. Dunno if we’ll be getting a real tree next year. There’s still a week to go before Christmas and this one’s so tinder-dry that we’re afraid to turn the lights on at night for fear that it’ll go up like a match head.

Sean played in the holiday concert tonight. There was a pretty long program, but I got Tim to go see at least the first half of it, and the intermediate band played within the first hour. Then we slipped out so Tim could “finish his homework;” it turned out that he had about five minutes’ worth.

Barb went to Aomori in the afternoon to see the Leningrad Ballet do The Nutcracker. She didn’t want to miss the concert, but she didn’t know there was going to be a concert when she signed up, and she loves The Nutcracker, so she bought tickets the minute she saw them on sale.