Happy new year, dear bunny_hugger. May it be one that sees us bundled soundly together.

So since people were asking about our Christmas trees let me jump ahead in time and show pictures of them. I didn't take my camera to the Christmas tree lot, so I haven't any pictures of their original context or of our tree-cutting experiences. This is just what we did with them once they were felled.

Our center-post tree stand in its traditional out-of-season occupation of being Pioneer 11.

The downstairs tree as bundled up at the tree farm and not quite set free.

The upstairs tree, set free (I didn't get a good picture of it bundled), in its spot beside the books and the supernova outside.

The downstairs tree in its full decorated livery. Well, somewhat full; bunny_hugger was adding to it through to a couple days before Christmas.

Better view of our downstairs tree, looking up so it seems all the bigger.

Close-up on the tree of a couple of important ornaments. In the upper right is a clay mould of Stephen's footprint made in 2009, in an incident that he hated but that bunny_hugger's mother judged to be something he could live with. There are a couple strands of his fur embedded in it. Beside it is a Bronner's ornament made for Columbo, that we didn't get to hang before his too-soon death. The Stephen ornament bunny_hugger's parents gave us just before he died.

And bunny_hugger's parents' tree, along with their very nervous basset hound who would very much like me to stop ... existing there all suspiciously like that.

Looking up at bunny_hugger's parents' tree, with a great number of nice icicle ornaments and a good number that include old photographs of their kids.

bunny_hugger on Christmas Day getting a great action shot of the tree.

And our upstairs tree as seen glowing in the night. It's the Carousel-themed tree so all the ornaments are carousel animals or ones that tribute a carousel we've been on.

Looking down from above our upstairs tree, because I thought this would be a fun angle.

I ... really would have sworn I had more good lit-by-itself-at-night photographs of the downstairs tree, but, all right. Notice the Cedar Point GateKeeper plush doll on top of the bookshelf there. They don't sell those at Cedar Point anymore, but its twins do appear as redemption prizes at midway games all over the place these days.

Trivia: In Athens of about the fifth century BCE the name of the first month of the year was Hecatombaion. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards. Don't think that ``Heca'' there isn't making me nervous.

Currently Reading: Hidden Harmonies: The Lives and Times of the Pythagorean Theorem, Robert Kaplan, Ellen Kaplan.