Adventures in Un-decorating the Christmas Tree

My tree in all of its pre-Christmas glory.

Today I finally took down my Christmas tree.  Yes, my tree was still up on January 20th...
In my defense:
1. I've been kinda busy since Christmas, especially on my days off.
& 2. The Christmas party for work is tomorrow, so technically my holiday celebrations don't end for another 24 hours or so...

I got home from work today and thought enough is enough, the tree has got to come down.  So, there I was this afternoon, carefully taking the most breakable items off of the tree first... I tend to take ornaments off one type at a time as I find it easier to pack them safely if I do so - if you think this is weird, you should ask my mom what she thinks of my system for decorating the Christmas tree!

I pulled lightly on a lower branch to try to turn the tree a bit in order to reach the back branches, when all of a sudden the tree was falling towards me.  I tried adjusting the angle of the tree in the hopes that I'd just unbalanced the base... to no avail.  No amount of fiddling with the three thumb screws on the base would convince the tree to behave as a good little artificial tree should.  The tree would not stand upright on its own.  I had to hold it up with one hand while I tried to rescue all of the breakable ornaments with the other.  I finally managed to get the most fragile items to safety, then had to wrestle with the rest of the ornaments which I just tossed into an empty box whilst trying to keep the tree from falling over.

The hardest part was getting the lights off, and once I'd managed to de-light the top section of the tree via rather unconventional methods, I was able to remove it, making the rest of the tree a little easier to handle, but making the de-lighting and de-garlanding rather difficult as I was then dealing with a tangled mess, all one-handed.

Somehow I managed to disentangle everything, including myself, and when I finally got to the point of dismantling the base of the tree I found this:

What? Doesn't your tree look like this too?

That's right, my tree broke about four inches from the base.  The metal twisted so that it was clinging to this piece by a tiny sliver.  I'm not quite sure how this happened, but it seems to have collapsed into itself where the screws held it in place.  I've examined the remains and it looks like I'll still be able to use the tree again, it'll just be a few inches shorter next year!  This may be a good thing as my tree fairy was brushing against the ceiling this year.

The poinsettia I rescued from work is
the only remaining sign of the holidays.
Actually, that's not true...

There's also my Gingerbread Tardis.