Welcome to the Bah Humbug Blahg Fest by none other than Grumpy Bulldog

Today is my post for the Bah Humbug Blahg Fest created by my friend, Patrick Dilloway. It goes all day long and you still have time to enter if you haven't done so already. If you don't already follow Patrick, please visit his blog and click follow. Then, create your post answering the following question:

What are the 12 things I hate most about the holiday season?

Here are my answers:

1. Christmas music 24/7 on every radio station. It isn't so bad now that I live in a city, but boy when I lived in a small town with only three radio stations on FM this got really really old.

2. The bitter cold (it lasts six months). I live in the northern hemisphere and December is miserable. Additionally, where I live, there's always temperature inversions creating smog through the whole valley for weeks at a time. 

I'm not a fan of this.

3. Hazardous driving conditions. Snow and ice make for difficult driving.

4. No sunlight. On the night of the winter solstice there is more than 14-hours of darkness. That just sucks. Christmas is only a few days after that so it's almost the same. It seems like all I do is live in darkness.

5. Television consists of mostly reruns because its the period following the November sweeps.

6. That Thanksgiving and Christmas are so close together. In order to visit family for both vacations, it requires lots of time off, travel, and you have to turn around and do it again.

7. Finding an affordable gift for someone that already owns everything that is affordable and who has few activities that don't cost a lot of money. In other words, they don't read...haven't read a book ever. They just want to go on vacations, remodel the home, and scheme about ways to buy exclusive cars. Hard to get something under a hundred bucks when what they really want is granite countertops.

8. The celebrity Christmas album that everyone is talking about. I don't want to hear how Justin Bieber sings "Jingle Bells".

Sure he's posed here in the snow. In reality he's tanning under lime
trees in California because he too hates the cold.

9. Receiving a gag gift from a friend that thought you'd think it was funny when in truth, it's crap.

10. People who make a big deal out of Xmas versus Christmas.

Everyone loves Monopoly, right? The Community Chest card "XMAS FUND MATURES"
never got any complaints in any game I played. Why does this always pop up?

11. Inflatable yard decorations. I hate them. They're ugly and people keep them in their yard for too long and the wind deflates them and knocks them around.

I will always live in a neighborhood with an H.O.A. so I can report
people that let this go on too long. You would either love me as
a neighbor or absolutely hate me. I don't think there'd be an
in-between state.

12. Fattening sugary foods are everywhere. No matter where you turn, at the office someone has cookies, pies, cakes, rolls, candy...it's ridiculous. They bring them to work to fatten up the co-workers so that their families don't get fat. And I have a love/hate relationship with food. I'm at my best when there is no temptation.

Christmas calories don't count. Yeah, right.

ATTENTION YET ANOTHER BLOG FEST FOR DECEMBER 31ST. AHEM.

Before you leave I want you to know about one being run by Heather Arundel at her blog My Demon Spirits. In the contest, she wants you to write a holiday-themed story (it can be scary or whatever) that is 500 words or less, post it on your blog, comment on Heather's blog that you posted it and link back to it so she can see where it is, and then click "follow" on Heather's blog.

You can win a $25.00 Amazon Gift Card, a beautiful e-reader cozy, and a leather writing journal. The cozy's are done by Zizi Rho Designs by a lady that just happens to write and knit at the exact same time. You try pulling that one off.