Murphy's Law rules on outside Christmas lights

What do you do the Sunday after Thanksgiving?
If you're like us, and what looked like most of our neighborhood, you put up the Christmas tree and the outside lights.
Or try to.
It's always an involved endeavor --- and that's if everything goes according to plan.
Which it rarely does.
To wit:
The first thing Sherri and I tried to do was hang the outside lights, figuring we'd be back inside the house in time to do the tree while listening to the blacked-out Bucs' game on radio.
Fat chance.
First we had make sure the lights were all working.
They weren't.
They never are.
Doesn't matter whether you bought a new set the year before, either.
It's one year and pffft!
So Sherri had to make a quick trip to Walmart to get a new set to complement the two working strands we still had left
The other four strands went in the garbage.
My wife was back in short order and slowly but surely we hung the new outside lights without injuring ourselves or getting into a big argument.
That done, we assembled the artificial tree limb by limb as the Bucs played on the radio.
We also managed to get up a good number of decorations, before finally calling it a day somewhere after the game's disappointing conclusion.
There's still another plastic tub of Christmas tree ornaments to go.

To be continued ...