Christmas challenge

So, the staff in our office, probably like office staff everywhere, love to decorate. They don't need much of a pretext before the place is dripping with festive cheer. Halloween and Thanksgiving were all out - the latter quite weird. I don't know, but a large cardboard turkey on all the adminstrators' doors sends some sort of message...
Of course once the turkeys went back into their boxes, out came the tree, garlands and other sparkly bits of holiday cheer. It wasn't long before one of the faculty complained. We had a long disucssion on the separation of church and state and I promised to look into the matter. Well it turns out the US Supreme Court has actually ruled on this issue, and the tree is not a religious symbol. You just have to call it a 'holiday' tree and it's all good. Personally I think that is some serious semantic slight of hand. Of course it's part of Christmas! However this does move the issue to one we can discuss as a department. When I had suggested that option to said faculty member, he asked if we were "really going to debate the Constitution". Now that it's no longer a constitutional issue, just one of personal preference, well, I guess we can have at it in a department meeting... That should be fun.

Winter has arrived

We have had a dry fall and the ski resorts are still mostly not open, but yesterday it snowed. Here is a picture Catherine took of the front garden.

Thanksgiving

Through the miracle that is divorced parenting, Craig and I ended up alone on Thanksgiving. I made a roast beef dinner because I think turkey is horribly overrated and I don't live in England so can't just go round making this meal every week. After we ate, we went to see 'Dan in Real Life' which was charming. We brought our red wine to go bottle and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The next evening friends converged and Catherine and Sam were back. Catherine and I had picked up a massively on sale version of the game 'Scene It' the TV edition. We forced the guests to play, but this was fair as a couple of them forced their nowhere near ready plum wine on the rest of us. It was bit of disappointment for C and S as the shows featured were all relics from before they were born. Some who protested loudly that they never watch tv and wouldn't be able to play were outed as 'Welcome Back Kotter' watchers in their distant past...
We went to bed late with the kitchen an utter mess. Craig and I slept in and got up to find a clean kitchen and a freshly baked batch of muffins. Thank you Catherine! Sam mumbled 'suck-up' in disgust, but ate a few of the muffins.