Christmas is a-coming down.

Those familiar with cats should note that she has, heretofore, mostly left the chair alone.

"Did you need something else?"

My father was already headed to the other side of the basement and up the stairs. I held in my hand four screws and anchors, that which we came down for. He thought he was done, and now he turned around to face me again, puzzled.

"Your workroom," I said, pointing as I looked. Even after the underground corner of my parent's house had been organized it was still a farrago of tools and projects — half of it useful, all of it memorable. At least four decades could be seen among the rows and piles.

There are, for the diligent and well-intentioned, measures of regret for work left openly undone. Yet in those exposed records are steps, decisions, moments — extant after so many years.

A cerulescent ground, an aureate sky.

This sort of weather always brings out the carols.

Not even an attempt at nonchalance.

From the first dunk, the water is theirs — if by a concession more fastidious than generous.

It had been stuck to the wall of the stairwell's fifth-floor landing. Who to whom? I can't say, but will confirm the species.

"Oh," sighed Danny O'Brien, as we sat down for the screening of Indoctrinate U. "I thought it was going to be a talkie."

The season is official.