Safety Fork, the

I picked up a new lens for my camera in time for Christmas festivities. It’s a lot better than the kit lens for taking natural-light photos indoors, but I still overestimated its capabilities—girls, you were right about needing the flash. Here are a few pictures I like that turned out okay or I was able to salvage.

I like this picture of my brother too much to not post it.

That is all.

Political organizations, please take note: I will not fork over my money and allegiance just because you send some guy to knock on my door.

Perhaps some context for perspective is in order. I’d barely returned from buying Christmas gifts this evening before somebody knocked on my door. I opened it to find some guy standing there. In his defense, he did have a beard. On the other hand, he wanted my money.

I don’t remember his name, but he was from the Sierra Club. I made him skip his spiel; it wasn’t that fluent. He wanted to draw me in in opposition to oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, and I’m familiar with the debate anyway.

In fact, I’m on his side of that debate. I told him straight up that if he wanted my support opposing drilling, specifically, he could have it, but that I wasn’t going to join the Club tonight. I’m just not going to sign up to support every one of the Club’s positions—positions I don’t have a first guess at enumerating—because we agree this once.

The second best part about getting Christmas lights is playing with the extra-long twist-ties they’re packaged with.

It’s a…uh…whatever you want it to be:

I’ve missed having a dim lighting option for when I’m watching movies or am otherwise not needing brightness, especially now that it’s dark by the end of the afternoon. So when I was out getting something to eat and some laundry detergent, I also grabbed a bunch of discounted Christmas lights. I’ve been lighting rooms this way since I was in high school, and I like it a lot. This time I color-coordinated for the living room:

For the dining room:

And for the kitchen: