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The lights go on in 4 days, but there is still much to do.

Since the last post, all of the sequencing has been completed. Night two is comprised of five songs plus voiceovers and took only 24 hours to sequence. But the songs are shorter than for the first night. Reflections of Earth will be the opening number each night. Here is a list of the songs that you will be hearing and the length of each show:

November 22 and alternating every other night – runs 20 minutes

Reflections of Earth

O’ Come Al Ye Faithful/O’ Holy Night

A Mad Russian’s Christmas

Christmas Eve/Sarajevo

Wizards of Winters

An Angel Returned

November 23 and alternating every other night – runs 14 minutes

Reflections of Earth

Jingle Bells (last year’s favorite per your votes)

Deck the Halls

Christmas In Kansas City

Jingle Bell Rock

We Wish You A Merry Christmas

And to listen to the 21,000+ lights, turn your car radio to 91.1FM.

This weekend, Mary and I have been hard at it installing all of the extension cords to the 16 mini-trees, and erecting the tri-mega tree. In all we have spent 37 hours over the last three days and almost everything is complete. In all we have 119 extension cords that would stretch our 2,550 feet, if connected end to end. The only thing left to do, except for reattaching the snowflakes to the tree 30′ in the air, is to finish the last quarter of the tri-mega tree with green and red lights. The trick will be to figure out how to do it since we have to attach the red lights to the hooks 9′ up while still using a ladder. I think there is a way without getting killed, so I’ll know if it works tomorrow. Then we’ll run a test to see how it looks in real life. Up until now, I’ve only seen it on the computer. Hope it looks as good in real time.

And speaking of seeing the programs run on the computer, I’ve had a weird side-affect from all this sequencing. The October 16 post included a picture of the computer screens that I’ve been staring at for all these hours. Kind of hard to see but the screen is made up primarily of cells, like an Excel spreadsheet. The side-affect I’ve experienced is that when I get up from the computer and go into a dimly lit space, I see those cells. Looks kind of like a screened door. Or I see the cells when I close my eyes. Just black with dim white horizontal and vertical lines. Very strange.

Hope you can stop by this Christmas season to see the 2007 computer animated Christmas lights shows. The lights come on at 6pm beginning Thanksgiving night, and off at 10:30pm, with the last show on New Year’s Eve. Our address is 7909 Fontana in Prairie Village. Fontana is two blocks east of Roe. And after you have seen a show or two, please come back here and let me know what you think of this year’s versions by adding a comment. I’ll post some pictures when things get up and running along with video for those out of town that won’t be able to see it in person.