I quite like Christmas - especially now I have a child, it starts to take some meaning again…plus the great food, and decorations - generally I like the Christmas spirit. However, here in the US - the Christmas spirit is even more extreme than in the UK, and in Bellevue - where I am staying on ths trip, they have the weirdest Christmas decorations in the street - let me describe : when I went for a walk around my hotel on Monday - I noticed that each streetlamp had a toy soldier about 4 feet high attached to it - I thought they were quite nice. Later on, I was chilling in my hotel room….watching some TV and I heard really loud music (I’m on the 16th floor), I checked the corridor, not from there…and went to the window, and the music was really loud there - so I decided to go investigate. At street level I found that the music was REALLY loud, and each of these toy soldiers, had their own part to play… Jingle Bells, Let it Snow and Winter Wonderland…all in a marching band style. I’m going to try and grab some video or at least pictures of these little drummer boys, but honestly - its a Christmas step too far for me.