Scattered Thoughts . . .

The other day (the day after Thanksgiving), we started putting up all the Christmas decorations inside the house.  I put the tree up and then starting pulling out strings of Christmas lights.  I quickly realized that most of last year's lights were no longer lighting up. I spent too much time troubleshooting each string yet I was still unable to fix any of the faulty strings.  We decided that perhaps this is the year to start replacing our old incandescent Christmas lights with LED Christmas lights.   I've been putting off making this switch to LEDs for two reasons.  First, the first few years of LEDs were only available in cool white which emitted a color somewhere between blue and cool white.  Those were a sickly color of blue and I didn't want my Christmas lights looking like that.  The other reason for putting off this switch to LEDs was the ridiculously high price.  Those early strings of LEDs were far too expensive. This year, I had no problems finding more appropriat

We went to Lowes last night to purchase two car-loads of stuff. We haven't been to Lowes at all this entire calendar year due to being sick for four months and the pandemic. This first trip to Lowes did not go as well as we would have liked. First, as we attempted to pull out of our driveway, my car's battery was dead... no lights, no sounds, nothing. I dug out the jumper cables and jumped it rather quickly but, apparently, this was a sign of things to come for the evening. When we arrived at Lowes and entered the store, the first thing we noticed was there were no displays of outdoor furniture, awnings, patios, etc, like we usually see when we first enter the store. It was more like walking through a store in a third world country or like trying to get building supplies in New Orleans right after Katrina. It was pathetic. First, we needed a few plants. The selection looked nice and colorful from the parking lot but it really wasn't all that great. We quic