I am secretly a 60-year-old woman:  In the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas I spend more time than I should decorating our house, including setting up a 30+ piece Christmas village in our dining room.

Acquiring these pieces has been a cultural learning experience, with me wading further into the world of collectibles than I care to admit.  Even so, I am far from welcome in that world.  Venturing into a collectibles shop, I always feel the staff go on high alert, as if the mere presence of testosterone could shatter porcelain figurines.  I am hovered over by wary sales people who refuse to believe that I am not buying that newly-retired Christmas village house for a wife or mother – surely there must be some estrogen somewhere in the equation.

Sadly, no, but a more manly part of the endeavor was the construction of a portable, multi-tier, fully-collapsible display table that can store easily in the off-season – quite an engineering feat if I say so myself.

On the other hand, I have been a miserable failure at the only other manly part of this annual venture:  Turns out it is very difficult to construct a functioning multi-tier model railroad on a display table that is intended to be portable and fully-collapsible.  One time, two years ago, I actually had the train running successfully for a short period of time, only to have it derail in the back of the table under multiple tiers of ornamental houses (where, it turns out, the train was completely inaccessible).  That prompted me to regroup, leaving the train portion of the project until retirement.  Also, I got tired of cutting off the fingers of little children who kept messing with the tracks.