The last couple of days have been spent either watching Hallmark, shopping or looking at lights. On the 23rd, my mom got a last minute call for her volunteer job at the theater, so I ended up seeing Olate Dogs, which was apparently on America's Got Talent. It's a father and son dog trainer duo with ten rescue dogs, all of which appear to be shaggily cute/at least part poodle. It sold out twice.

I generally enjoyed the show, but sometimes you kind of wondered about the setup of the show. They start out with all ten dogs on stage, do some tricks, introduce them, then have a dog fashion show (uh, I loved that), then mostly they kind of weed down to only one dog at a time doing comedy routines with the dad, and they show a video. It's also fairly short. I guess that sort of thing can be due to the issues of dealing with dogs? Cute as hell though.

After that we went around looking at lights, and discovered a new house, Gray Fox. There's no photo of this online, but there's a GIANT inflatable Darth Vader with a candy cane lightsaber at that house. Very impressive.

Yesterday I took my friend Jackie around to see the Christmas lights in my area. This went really super well and was probably one of the best times I've ever had with her. I am also proud that for once I came up with the cool stuff to see.

After picking her up at BART, we went to the mall for a brief dinner before the mall closed (it was busy but not insanely so) and then went to the following:

* Widmer World, which was her favorite of the night because it is basically an amusement park in their backyard. We got there around 6:30 ish and got through it by about 7:15 or so, something I heard later on wasn't so doable because the line went on and on.

* Calle Reynoso: I hadn't been to this one before and we only drove by it, but it looked really cool.

* Candy Cane Lane: This was a drive through long court that was fun to see, had several Disney themed houses, a bear skiing off a house, and a dog peeing on a hydrant.

* Sixth and SJ Streets: I don't think these houses are online for some reason, but I took Jackie by the house that always has their yard full of inflatables, and she loved that. I also showed her the area I call the "boozeberhood," because several houses on that street corner have no lights EXCEPT for a giant light up beer stein or martini glass or wine glass, stuff like that. I suspect they coordinated somehow.

Deacon Dave's: Jackie enjoyed this one, though not as much as Widmer World, which did not surprise me. This year's theme was international Christmas and she enjoyed throwing coins in the coin game to make things light up. I introduced her to Deacon Dave and she asked if he left the lights in the trees up all year round, and he said no, he takes them down because otherwise they end up fading. it takes him until Easter to take it all down and then he starts again in September. Much to my amusement, she thought he was cute. She always does like old and unavailable....

Knottingham. This is a house that we normally drive by but got out and looked at on the 23rd, and I knew I had to take Jackie by it. They now have a snow machine and various buttons you can push to make music and lights go on and a Santa phone. Way fun. She had a great time. One of the best Christmas Eves I've had in a while!

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