In Which We Deck the Halls!

Every year at this time, I enjoy the holiday decorations around campus. Indeed, my very first Blip ever was a picture of the festive Christmas tree in the lobby of Old Main, our university's chief administrative building.

Two of the absolute delights of the holiday season on campus - for me, at least - are visiting the gingerbread replica of the Nittany Lion Inn, and stopping by the Creamery to enjoy some tasty peppermint stick ice cream.

On this particular day, I was riding the bus again (because it seems to snow all the time here now), and so my day began and ended on campus, where the bus drops me off in the morning and picks me up in the late afternoon. I had meetings in my own work building (off campus), but before I went there, I scurried over to the Nittany Lion Inn to see if the gingerbread replica was finally there. And it was! Hooray!

Even better, I had brought my little friends the Crittergators with me. They are the little red and green critters you see in this photo. And so I figured it was time to do some Crittergator (CG) photography, just like we did last Christmas season.

An older gent looking kind of official sort of wandered up and stood behind me as I got out the CGs and prepared for my shoot. I very quietly continued getting out my camera, placed the CGs where I wanted, and turned around and gave the guy a big broad, 100-watt SMILE!!!! And he just looked at me, and looked at the CGs, and smiled at me. And walked away . . .

(First rule of public photography: act like whatever you are doing is perfectly normal and just keep on doing it . . . It might help build your credibility if you take a few shots and then turn the camera around in your hands a few times and scowl at it once or twice and utter something about F-stops and apertures.)

So we spent a few minutes there, posing the Crittergators every which way, and then we packed it up and headed outside into the snow. I was taking some outdoor shots after this, and I went to wipe snow off my camera. And thought - wow, what a nice powdered sugar snow! Only - it actually WAS powdered sugar, from the gingerbread house. And now the CGs are covered in it too! Sweets for the sweet, I always say.

In this scene from our festive little photo shoot, the Crittergators are enjoying the balcony Christmas tree on the Nittany Lion Inn gingerbread replica (you can get a better sense of the size of the whole thing here, as well as the positioning of the balcony in regard to the rest). They might even be singing a tiny Christmas carol . . .

Next on the list: peppermint stick ice cream at the Creamery!

Fa la la la la - la la la la! :-)

The soundtrack: the female country music trio SHeDaisy performs the song Deck the Halls.