Parade of Lights!!!

To get us in the Christmas spirit, we went out to see the Holiday Parade of Lights. Or the Festive Electric Parade. Or the Seasonal Glow-in-the-Dark-apalooza. Whatever non-denominational inclusive title you want to give it. Santa was at the end of it, so it's still the Christmas parade, any way you slice it. In Halifax, they do it at night - so it's COOLER. :)

We went down to the Sally Ann and picked out the most AWESOME Christmas sweaters we could find. Criteria: warm, ridiculous, and hideous.

We'd like to think we succeeded. :)

We stopped into the Uncommon Grounds at South Park and Fenwick and got the most fantastic winter-y coffee hazelnutty mocha-y soy-y (soy-y?) coffee-y drinks ever. Mmm.

Then it was off to the parade!!! We got a prime spot on a little hill next to a family with a kid who was convinced he was a jedi. He was priming himself for later concussions by tossing himself repeatedly down the hill - if we laughed, he threw himself harder. It was so hard not to laugh. :)

And then... it was PARADE TIME!!! (I brought my very broken glasses and prayed nobody saw us. Good lord. Just my luck we'd run into Johnny Depp. "Oh, hey Johnny, yeah, the parade is sooooo great.... Oh these? Yeah, I heard having a twist tie holding your frames together is the new black. (pause) It's not? Well, THIS is embarrassing.")

So apparently the parade marshall was phoning it in this year. The first float arrived, sped past us like it was late for the parade, and then two more floats flew past us. Then some tweens baton-twirling... and then.... NOTHING. For easily 20 minutes. People were leaving in droves - did they really think the parade was over? Two dodgy floats and some pre-teen baton twirling??! Good grief.

And then...

get ready to look closely.

(Okay, not THAT closely... it's pretty obvious. Like today's Metro Toronto "Peterborough Pete" gaff, only a little more PG-13, thank god...)

Honestly, I couldn't dream up something this stupid to Photoshop. This was the sign on a float in the Holiday Parade of Lights here in Halifax. The float was entitled "SANTA'S SIGN SHOP". What, did he have some sort of equal-opportunity mandate where he had to hire a bunch of dyslexic elves? Is this part of Harper's Literacy for Kids program? Holy crap. Please, tell me someone else saw this.

The rest of the parade was uneventful; the small boy got tired of tumbling down the hill on his head and his parents got tired of watching him, so they went home. After that, it was just floats. Floats and more floats. Here are some of the highlights as we saw them:

This one actually looked like something!

They had DANCING GINGERBREAD PEOPLE!!! DANCING!!!

It was awesome.

Pyro AND smoke? Sweet.

Hard to see, but if you look to the right, behind the tree,

you can see the dancing MacPass.

For Toronto folk, it's sort of like a metropass but you put it in your car and you can speed through the tolls on the bridge without the battering-ram hummers chasing you.

Awesome.

"C100 everywhere!"

That's the slogan of the radio station that SHOULD be called

"C100! We'll Nickelback You To Death!"

But they DID have a cool Buzz Lightyear in their float...

That was solid.

It almost makes up for their insufferable programming.

Thanks to Dal Architecture for their confusing

people-dancing-in-a-giant-bedsheet float.

I hope nobody needs emergency services during the parade...

because it's going to be tough to drive fast

with all those lights in your peripheral...

not to mention, you're stuck BEHIND A PARADE...

All in all, it was a great evening.

Hooray for the holidays!!