tis the season

carol of the bells is a long standing texas tech tradition. i remember it being so enchanting and surreal. all the buildings in memorial circle covered in lights. thousands and thousands of lights.
i attended this year with some new found friends.
it was cold.
it was crowded.
the girls behind me spoke in amplified volumes and strings of profanity. while the choir sang heart warming songs about a Savior coming to redeem a lost people, the were fantasizing about lil'wayne or bob marley coming out and smoking a bong while singing Christmas music.... (apparently they had not heard about bob marley's passing...)
anyway, after sound system malfunctions and a crowd growing restless we finally came to the oh-so-anticlimactic flipping of the switch.
the lights came on and we hollered and it was over.
there were fewer lights than i remembered. exponentially fewer.and they have clearly replaced a lot of the strands over the years. where they used to be a uniform red and yellow-ish white, it is now a hadge podge od the traditional and the new red and blue-ish white. i'm no designer or anything, but it stood out like a sore thumb. or a bikini in church as carolynn the cook used to say.
anyhoo. after that bit of a let down we got to go up in the schools bell tower and watch a couple of guys play carols for the whole campus to hear.
it was radical. made the night into an adventure.
yay.
this past week i got to help decorate my mom's house and my grandma's place for Christmas. it is so rad to be surrounded by sparkling cheery wintery nostalgic things. i love it.
pictures to come of all that.
 but for now i give you these: