Super Bright Lights in Motion

On Saturday I brought a Douglas fir into the house and turned the job of decorating it to younger hands than mine, except for light installation, though Lilly is in fact old enough. When I was 12, I put the lights on the tree, including the task of finding just the right branches for the two surviving bubble lights in a string that was older than I was, and delicately screwing them into their sockets once the string was in place.

This year we have a new string that I don't remember acquiring, which means that Yuriko either got it in the days after Christmas last year, when such things are vastly marked down, or at a yard sale in the summer, when few thoughts are given over to Christmas decoration.

Anyway, we have them: 150 Super Bright Lights in Motion. "You have purchased the most unique Christmas light set available," the box tells me. Maybe so. The lights are controlled by a "digital memory switch" that "holds previously selected function until changed." The string, which is made up of 3.5V twinkle lights, has eight functions; that is, you can set it to light in eight different ways. Cool.

The eight ways are -- in order, written on the digital memory switch -- 1. All Functions; 2. Slow Chasing; 3. Random Twinkle; 4. Colors Fade; 5. Chasing Twinkle; 6. All Fade OFF/ON; 7. Dancing Lights; 8. Steady Burn. I haven't sat and stared at all of the functions just yet, so I'm a little short on descriptions for them. But so far Dancing Lights (I think), which go on and off in patches up and down the string, seem to be everyone's favorite.