Finally.

At long last, we’re ready to go. Well….almost.

We go live tomorrow. We have a punchlist of a few items to complete — a few more plugins, fix a light here and there, get a few candy canes in place. But, oh how it took us a while to get here.

It seems as though forces were conspiring against us getting the show live this year. My job didn’t permit me to take off the normal week of Thanksgiving, which has usually provided me with 8 days of setup and configuration. Instead, that was limited to the Thanksgiving weekend, and even then it was limited in time. So, time management was going to be a challenge.

Then there was the weather. Lots of rain throughout November made simple tasks quite difficult. Going up a ladder isn’t so bad, but when it’s raining and cold and you’re trying to stay safe, normal tasks take twice or three times as long.

The humdinger was dealing with the wind. Over the past week, several days we saw wind gusting upwards of 30 MPH over the course of several days, and this caused serious difficulties with the mega tree. Like, expert level of difficulty. Undoing the mess that the wind caused on the mega tree took several days. It was significant enough that I’m presently evaluating new structures around the mega tree that can reduce the problems caused by excessive wind.

Ok, enough venting. That’s behind us….on with the show. Merry Christmas!