hanging up christmas lights

you hang up your christmas lights yet?

usually we do ours on the weekend of thanksgiving,
but hanging up lights on the gutter outside is a two-man job
since it requires a ladder. as always, safety first.

i’ve got some gripes with christmas lights. first of all,
they break easy as fuck and as a result of the circuitry,
when one breaks, it’s a series connection, so like an entire
section of them just turns off.

ideally, if the filament burns out, it would also burn
the shunt beneath it so that electricity could still flow
to the rest of the lights, but half the time this doesn’t happen
and you’re left scratching your head as to where the problem is.

so debugging your lights is one thing. another thing is just
how cumbersome it is in the biting cold of Illinois to be outside
and hanging up lights with plastic clips: there’s gotta be a better way.
i think some of our neighbors have them pre-installed onto their house roofing
and they just turn on and off when the season arrives.
that sounds like some good shit.

i like christmas lights a lot, all things considered.
the joy that i get from seeing festive decorations and lights
is easily worth the effort put in for setting them up.

but hey, this wouldn’t be the internet if i wasn’t complaining.

thanks for reading today’s post.
so pretty..