As seen on Jackass.

The bulk of the Christmas shopping is finally done, and the Christmas lights are finally up on the oak tree in the front yard. Boy, that was a sight to see. E was in her little chair on the front porch, and D, het-up and overtired from pre-school (from whence we had just come), was running around, throwing the mystery magazine as far as he could while singing "A Hard Day's Night" at the top of his lungs. And, not to be outdone, there I was, on a rickety 6 foot ladder, hugging the tree while trying to throw the lights over a branch just out of my reach.

We wrap the Christmas lights around rolled-up newspapers to store them, and I've taken to writing messages to the future on the paper, to be read the following year. As a measure of how much the world has changed, I opened one string of lights where the paper was dated Jan. 1, 2001 (we must not have used it last year) and my message was "How's George W. doing?" The next string had the paper from Jan. 1, 2002, and I had written "Are we still alive?" Ah, the boundless optimism of late 2001...