On his birthday weekend, Blaine rises while Christmas tree falls

If a fully decorated Christmas tree falls in a living room with the entire family home, does it make a sound?  Heck yeah it does!  A noisy crashing sound, in fact.

The day after Blaine extended his Picks lead on his 39th birthday, a potentially devastating incident occurred in Picks Central's living room.  For the first time ever, the family Christmas tree toppled over!  Ornaments shattered on the hardwood floor and down below in the tiled foyer as the 7-foot-2-inch tree lost its balance Monday night and came to rest in a near-horizontal position with the tree stand still clinging to the trunk.  The power cord was yanked from the wall, so the tree was dark.

"The tree went," QT announced in a surprisingly calm tone.  The rest of the family came running to see what happened.  It wasn't a pretty sight.  Quite disturbing, actually.

Blaine lifted the Douglas Fir into an upright position as QT adjusted the tree stand.  Within minutes, the tree was standing on its own once again.  But now came the scary part of assessing the damage and determining what Christmas ornaments were lost forever.

Among the thousands of needles shaken from the tree, there were only a handful of ornaments found broken -- maybe eight at most -- and none were considered valuable.  Hundreds of ornaments remained attached to the poor tree, and the few that got jarred loose found lucky resting places.  The family's 2005 Christmas ornament -- a fragile Walt Disney World ball purchased on their Florida vacation -- was tossed from the tree but landed undamaged among papers on a nearby table.

Not a single tree light was busted, and the entire tree lit when plugged back in.  That was amazing!  The lopsided tree that Blaine and Nicki picked out at Home Depot doesn't look perfectly straight in its new position, but its weight is now evenly distributed, which apparently wasn't the case when it was put up 15 days earlier.  The Angel remains cockeyed at the peak as a reminder to everyone that the tree might be unstable.  All in all, it's the best circumstance a family could hope for considering the terrible amount of damage that could have resulted.

Blaine's 12-3 record on Sunday in Week 14 of the 2005 Picks was equaled by a high-flying Trevor, but it overpowered his closest competitor, Nickster, who was 10-5.  She remains in second place but now trails by six games with only 28 games left in the final three weeks.  Blaine's good fortune includes six straight overtime wins in the past six weeks.