Category Archives: Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Whew! We made it!

I have to say, this fall was absolutely over the top busy. I am not sure how I survived. (The usual way, organization, lots of screaming, no friends, etc.)

But it’s my week off, and it is GLORIOUS. Today was my second day in a row of sleeping with no alarm set, and I am better at it than I thought I would be.

Okay, what happened in the meantime? Well, I hosted a cookie exchange party with about 15 people, and it was really fun! It was a school night, so it had a finite end time, but we had a lovely time drinking Wassail Punch, eating spinach artichoke dip, taste testing a few cookies, filling some tins with a large variety, and catching up (of course!). I ended up with a large tin full of terrific cookies, and gave a few away. Some are still frozen, so they will be doled out over the next few weeks. I will try to open up my guest list next year to non musician friends as well, but I wanted to keep things simple and have everybody already know each other!

The next day I finished up at my before school class, and though I still have to submit my grades, it has been really glorious not getting up so early. Except for Christmas Eve, when I decided to pile on and take entirely too many gigs! It was a festive and memorable day though, with five church services at 3 churches, a lovely dinner at Louie’s mom’s house, and more Christmas music than you could shake a stick at. Unless you have a lot of sticks.

Another enjoyable gig was playing with Mannheim Steamroller. Interestingly, my parents had just seen the show in Shipshewana, Indiana, and then I got to play with the show here! I chatted with the traveling violinist a bit and she had nice things to say about Shipshewana, of course.

The thing about playing a bunch of concerts is that it is utterly exhausting BUT it is also quite fun to see colleagues and chat at each gig. So it ends up being more social than you might think. Teaching from home is great, but I don’t get as much interaction with adults and certainly not from adults who are not paying for my time, haha! So although it was an exhausting month/months, there wasn’t much I would change.

I do have a few thoughts though, which are 1) I need to be more cautious about taking jobs that conflict with teaching. I ended up doing a lot of rescheduling and then having to turn down other jobs that conflicted but might have had less teaching conflicts and 2) if I am hosting Christmas next year I will likely only want to play one Christmas Eve service. The last one I played was at Ladue Chapel, which is one of my favorite churches to play at: the musician director is amazing, and the people are so warm and friendly, and it always ends up being a wonderful musical experience. Plus it reminds me of my home church(in South Carolina) more than any other places I play at, which makes it feel extra special. The rest, it was fabulous, and I can’t wait to see what the new year brings!

I will be enjoying my week “off” though: I used quotations because I made a rough schedule/to-do list for the week, but it’s really a week off because I don’t have gigs or teaching! I do have some household chores to take care of and some practicing to do–January is of course busier than ever, and I’m playing four different chamber music programs during January and February (only 1 in February) in addition to a show at the Fox where I double violin/viola (Funny Girl) and we only just got the music. So there’s work to be done, but it’s all very manageable and hopefully fun. (I say that now, we’ll see, hahahahahah!)

We are in no rush to take down the holiday decorations: I think it’ll get done after I return from Phoenix (I’m taking a trip over New Year’s.) It was great having two trees, though that means extra decorations to take down, less fun. We have plenty of storage space though.

My mom sent this violin snow globe as a gift. It also plays music.

Christmas Day was pretty low key. Louie and I don’t really exchange gifts, but he brought me a few things from his trip, and I gave him a “Birds of the National Parks” Calendar for his office. I made cranberry rolls with orange icing, and we watched Christmas episodes of the Great British Baking Show for a bit. Later in the day we went out for Chinese food with his family, and then we ended the night still chipping away at Suits, hoping to finish the show at SOME POINT. There are SO many seasons!

The cranberry rolls, so good! I ended up having to make a second batch of dough however, since the first batch just wouldn’t rise properly.

Anyway, that’s it for now. It was a low key holiday after too many performances: 16 different performances/church services in December, not counting rehearsals!

Cookies and Concerts

This has been the busiest December I can recall. Certainly since before the pandemic, so that’s something. I’m averaging 55-60 hour work weeks, which is insane and unsustainable…thankfully things are coming to a close soon and I’ll get some breathing time.

We haven’t been doing a whole lots of social activities here, as you can imagine. In a way some of my concerts are social as often there is downtime to chat with colleagues, so that’s been nice. I’m doing a cookie party in a few days, and I’m looking forward to getting a massage later this week. I’m finishing up teaching at Wash U on Tuesday, at my morning school on Wednesday, and at home on Thursday. And then I get a break for a few weeks, and I can’t wait!

I read some blogs and see people doing parties, and cookie decorating, and seeing concerts and shows, and I’m so happy for you all! I’m the one playing for all of those things (well, not cookie decorating.). I’ve played Messiah with two choirs, played with the 442’s (a local band), played at a variety of churches, played with backup tracks for a solo gig at a corporate event, even did a wedding (no Christmas music at all, crazy!). We did manage to celebrate Hanukkah and had a nice time with that, and I even accomplished a completely insane week where I added up approximately 70 hours of work. December pays for some other months, really, though it’s gotten to the point that I wonder which months that is. It’s possible I need to cut back, but I’m also having a good time, other than being tired.

Now, it’s ME so I’ve also done some baking, with more planned. I’m still getting used to my “new”oven. I finally ordered an oven thermometer and plan to use it later today to see what’s really going on: the oven definitely runs hot, but the other issue is that it’s not totally consistent through the space. Our old house had a wonderful convection oven, which we have been tempted on more than one occasion to bring over here (the old house isn’t sold, though a friend is currently living there.) I have had various successes and failures with baking, some due to my errors, some due to oven errors (and probably me too), and one due to misreading and putting the dish in a smaller pan than asked for AND overbaking it. Sigh.

These cookies didn’t spread at all, but they are delicious and fudgy and I love them. I did have some spreading issues, which makes me think that either my baking soda/powder isn’t working anymore (getting new of both to be sure) or I’m adding too much flour (though the dough has felt okay for some of the recipes) or who knows. I’m also thinking the oven being weird doesn’t help, but hopefully I can figure out what to do with that. Nonetheless the above cookies were delicious and some are still left…(actually many.)

Miles and Muriel really love the radiators when the heat is on. They are going to be so disappointed when spring comes! They spend most of their time going from one radiator to the next, together or separately. There’s no specific rhyme or reason to it, but I’m sure it makes sense to them.

I have a church service to play for this morning (Vaughan-Williams at Ladue Chapel), some lessons to teach, and a concert this evening at another church. Last weekend I had four different performances with rehearsals, which was a bit much. Seriously, this December has been crazy. I’ve said no to a ton of stuff too, which I always hate doing, but I’m happy to be so busy! In a way. Louie has been crazy as well, with finishing up classes, getting ready to teach a winter break class, and getting a paper ready to submit. We are both workaholics, which is a fundamental part of our relationship, I suppose. We talk about what is sustainable about this, and what might work for the future to slow down, but he has no intention of retiring early, and he seemed surprised when I suggested that I planned to retire at 65. I guess one can never tell the future, but sometimes I look at this and say, hmm, 20 more years and then I’m done!

We’ll see! How is your December going? Do you find this is the first year that things are REALLY back in full swing with events and parties and concerts? Are you leaning into the holiday craziness or stepping back and trying to focus on just a few things?

Cheeseball for a work party

One more thing: I’ve been listening to various podcasts about life balance, organization and such, and I’m thinking about my goals for 2024. I haven’t been setting specific goals or intentions for a few years (pandemic mind) but there are some things I would like to accomplish in the near future, and maybe writing them down and actually, you know, working towards them, would be a good idea. Perhaps I’ll do a goals blog post, with the ones that I would feel comfortable sharing publicly.

This was from a concert the other week. I thought it was a great photo: I took it from somebody’s facebook page to share with you all 😉

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! I feel like I should give you all of my New Year’s Resolutions and wrap up my favorite parts of the year AND tell you all about my Christmas Vacation, but since it’s already January 5, hmm what to do?

I’m back to work officially now, though I have the rest of today off. I taught my class this morning, and thought, since I’d been wearing cloth masks and everybody says cloth masks are bad I’d try a surgical mask instead (what I had on hand). I don’t know how people play the violin in a surgical mask, it is impossible and it pokes me in the eyes. Sigh. I’m not quite sure what to do as the only masks I have found that I can play violin in are cloth masks.

Yes, isn’t it great that the pandemic has grown so large again and things are being canceled? So, maybe that’s where to start telling you about my break. We were told oh yes if you are vaccinated/boosted it should be fine to travel, don’t worry, and then suddenly everybody was getting COVID anyway. But we decided to risk it to see our family, because at this point it’s been nearly two years, and it was fine to avoid activities for a bit, but you have to live your lives. I mean, driving down to South Carolina was still probably the most risky behavior.

The last week before Christmas was busy with finishing up teaching, packing, playing with Mannheim Steamroller, seeing my friend April, seeing Louie’s family, and playing Christmas Eve gigs.

Christmas Eve selfie (me in a mask in front of a Christmas Tree).
Swedish Christmas Dinner at Louie’s mom’s house–she has several of those chime candle things that the chime turns from the heat of the candles.

We had a wonderful dinner with Louie’s family, lots of good Swedish food, including a homemade Princess Cake. It used to be that no one knew what a Princess Cake is, but now, thanks to the Great British Baking Show, they not only know but they have very strong opinions about it.

The Princess Cake.

Truthfully, I do not love marzipan as much as some, but it was a lovely cake.

We drove to Clinton, South Carolina (my hometown) on Christmas Day, which was a terrific drive. It was warm enough that we ate lunch outside at a rest area, at a picnic table! I’d packed egg salad from AO&CO which was a fabulous idea–it made for a lovely picnic and a treat. Driving on Christmas Day meant that most restaurants would be closed, but that the traffic was nonexistent! We made excellent time and were at my parents house (also known as home) for dinner. My mom had a few casseroles for Christmas Dinner, so we enjoyed corn casserole and sweet potato casserole with chocolate cake for dessert (I think!).

The next morning we had my family’s traditional Christmas Day brunch (though it was the day after) of cheese grits and fruit cocktail. We also had shrimp cocktail, which was traditionally eaten on Christmas Eve. My other siblings had other Christmas plans this year, so it was just the four of us, which was very nice and low key. We hung out, went for a bike ride, and visited.

My dad helping me get set up on the electric trike for our ride.
My dad adjusting the seat.

My dad has an electric assist “trike” and he just happened to have an extra one on hand that he had purchased for one of my aunts. Louie had to ride a regular bike, though he got a chance after our first ride to switch out.

The next day we drove down to Columbia to visit Congaree National Park. We weren’t the only ones with the same idea, and while it wasn’t as busy as Arches or Grand Teton, we did have to park in the “oversized vehicles” lot as all the regular spaces were taken. There are boardwalks through the swamp area that you can walk on, as well as many miles of trails and canoeing to be done. We opted for just the boardwalks since my parents weren’t up for more extreme hiking.

It was a beautiful day, eerily warm, but lovely to be outside. We walked around for about 2 hours and then had a small picnic.

Lots of swampy waters, though it seemed like a pretty dry time. I imagine it is much swampier in the spring and fall.
My dad was likely pointing at a large loblolly pine tree, since that was a big feature of the park.
You can see some dwarf Palmetto trees in the background.

We also went down to the Riverwalk to walk along the Congaree River near downtown Columbia, but didn’t go too far: my parents were tired of walking and in the words of my niece, it smelled like Chautauqua Lake in places.

It was my parent’s wedding anniversary so we wanted to take them out to dinner. (They tried to insist on paying, but that’s how things go). We ate at the Bonefish Grille on the way back to Clinton and enjoyed a lovely meal outside. We didn’t want to eat inside with them as to avoid anybody getting COVID.

The following day we went up to Greenville to walk around and have lunch. We also visited an electric bike shop and test rode a few bikes with electric assist. We learned there are two different kinds, torque assist, where the bike goes according to your pedaling, and I forget the name, but the bike just sorts of goes faster. These were Pedago bikes and even had a throttle, you could simply go up to about 20 mph without pedaling at all!

Our next stop on the trip was Macon Georgia to visit Louie’s in laws from before. They are wonderful people and very supportive of his relationship with me, so it was a fun time. The mom and two sisters were visiting, and we had a great time eating, drinking, playing games, chatting, and doing a little sight-seeing. They had two dogs there too, so the house was a bit louder than at my parents’.

We had some great meals, a good seafood and tapas dinner outside a restaurant, a fancy Christmas dinner with some more family (mushroom wellington for the vegetarians, along with potatoes, brussels sprouts, homemade rolls, and tomato salad), and New Year’s Eve with fancy appetizers and leftover dinner from Christmas. We were so glad to spend time with everybody!

The table, set for Christmas dinner.

COVID wise we saw a few more people than we might have felt comfortable, but everybody was vaccinated, and a few even took rapid tests here and there, but so far we are still not showing any signs, so I think we might be safe.

After that we drove up through Atlanta and spend a day with my friends April and Charlie. It was something close to 80 degrees so we hung out on their front patio and then had dinner at a really good Mexican place near their house. Louie and I both had the tofu enchiladas which came with a mushroom sauce and were amazingly delicious. We have already attempted to recreate them but ended up making enchiladas with mushroom gravy–oddly tasty, but perhaps not quite right.

April and Charlie’s house, fully decorated for Christmas!

We headed back home the next day, and hit every possible traffic spot, stuck in traffic in Chattanooga for probably 1 1/2 hours, another 1/2 hour in Nashville, slow downs north of Nashville due to snow and traffic, and finally got out of the snow and the traffic to get home around 9 pm. The cats were thrilled to see us!

So now I’ve been back a few days. I’ve spent a fair amount of time simply reading and relaxing. Today my plan is to start packing up the Christmas Decorations, and then read some more. Tomorrow I’m teaching some private students (officially the semester starts Monday, but I’m doing some makeup lessons from last semester) and then Friday the same plus my early morning job. Next week we are back to my full teaching load at home plus early morning, and then the following week is the start of the college semester, except we are online for the first two weeks, so I’m not sure how that will affect things (i.e. which of my students brought their instruments home?).

How was your Christmas and New Year’s Eve? (if you celebrate) Did you get some time off? Did you get COVID? Did you see family and friends?

Less than a week away!

I think it would likely make more sense to have more time off BEFORE Christmas, i.e. swap Christmas and New Years, to get ready for the holiday. In fact, that should go for all holidays. What ends up happening is that we get so busy and stressed out leading up to the holiday that by the time it gets here we are just so tired, and perhaps don’t enjoy it as much as we’d want.

That being said, I’m enjoying everything, I’m just ready for a break. I hear the Senate is off, but the rest of us are still working. There’s two more days of school, and I’m working until Christmas Eve as usual. I do have Christmas Eve Eve off though! I’m playing with Mannheim Steamroller tomorrow, and I have two more early morning classes this year.

The weekend has been fun. We went out to Nixta on Friday night, which was nice. We’ve watched entirely too much Yellowstone (for us that’s like 4 episodes over two nights, binge tv watchers we are not), and we watched two sets at Jazz at the Bistro last night. We had bought tickets because Sean Jones was playing, and then it turned out that a friend of my sister Carrie’s, a fabulous pianist named Aaron Diehl was playing as well. We loved the performance and had a great time.

The Clark Terry Centennial Celebration Band.
Selfie! This is the new autograph, right? And proof of meeting someone, of course.

This morning I’m getting ready for friends to come over for a little brunch. It’s basically my quartet, except the personnel has changed a bit since Eliana had her baby and we also haven’t been meeting anymore. But we have a concert with the St Louis Chamber Chorus this afternoon and we thought it would be great fun to get together beforehand. I made an egg casserole with spinach, mushrooms, and goat cheese, and the others are bringing things. (I’m also setting out a few other things, a small cheese ball that was in the freezer from cheese ball making last weekend, and some dilly snack mix I made for sharing and snacking, plus probably fruitcake cookies.)

Tonight we are meeting friends to walk down Candy Cane Lane, which we have never done. And this week we are having dinner with Louie’s family, hanging out with my friend April (woo hoo!!!!) and of course, getting ready for the holidays. We are traveling south, and I’m excited.

Since the holidays are coming up and you might have more time to read, a few recommendations:

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo. I almost put this one down after starting because I found the writing style annoying. I’m glad I didn’t because I ended up really enjoying it. So many characters, so different than myself, such a great read. Really really good.

Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult. It’s a novel set during the beginning of the pandemic, which is…maybe too soon right now, but it’s really good.

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston. Light, fun, unique, a little sci fi.

The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey. Strange and different. Cloning is bad?

Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty. Makes you feel glad your family is less dysfunctional. Communication is important!

That’s it for now! I’d better finish getting the house ready for guests and bake an egg casserole.

Undecorating

Undecorating for Christmas is far less exciting. I did most of it yesterday, and just have to take down the tree today at some point and put the boxes away.

My last post was perhaps a little negative. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret any time I spent playing music with other people, particularly my quartet over the past few years. I was just realizing (for the umpteenth time) that chamber music has never been my great love, and that I don’t miss playing in small ensembles.

I have missed playing in large ensembles for a long time, but the orchestral world being what it is, both difficult to procure a position and seemingly quite difficult to enjoy that position after you have it…I am fine with my current lot in life.

Today is my last official day of vacation , even though I’ve been ramping up my work each day, at least from the perspective of answering and sending emails, and I even practiced violin a bit yesterday. Over the break, I did other work stuff besides emails, such as submitting grades and setting up courses in Canvas, but I have to say that overall it was amazingly relaxing.

I watched some Great British Baking Show while doing cross-stitch. I read several good books, including Jodi Picoult’s The Book of Two Ways, Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, Katharine McGee’s American Royals and Majesty. Louie and I rewatched the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy, watched the latest season of Cobra Kai, and are working our way through Schitt’s Creek (two thoughts, why did we wait so long, and of course everybody’s favorite character is David!). I did a lot of cooking and baking, I did some organizing and decluttering though nothing major, and I did a good amount of workouts. We went on a few hikes and walks as well.

We woke up New Year’s morning to a bit of ice storm debris…I forgot to mention this before.

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The neighbor’s tree had lost some branches into our yard. Luckily it didn’t seem to cause any damage and Louie was able to saw the branches down easily enough.

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The other day we went to Cliff Cave park to walk around. There were more people there than we would have liked, and a few too many groups of people who didn’t see fit to step to the side (rather than walking 2 or 3 abreast) OR wear masks, but we had ours to put on when needed. I’m always more concerned with people who might be walking or running in front of us for any length of time than I am with people who are just walking by, but still, it’s a pandemic and it’s not hard to give space on a wide path.

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Very large trees! That’s the Mississippi River.

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A picture of Louie taking a picture.

So tomorrow I’m back to teaching. I am both looking forward to it and not looking forward to it. Louie tells me I can’t retire yet, so I guess I’ll log into zoom inside. I originally set up my schedule to start on Wednesday rather than Monday because I was supposed to do jury duty. I started worrying about it a week ago and got a postponement of a year, but they did end up canceling the week (due to COVID) anyway. I guess this time next year I’ll be complaining about jury duty, and I’ll have to miss some work for it (as usual) but I’m glad to have another year. I was originally scheduled to do it in June, then September which I postponed to January. It’s a mess, isn’t it.

One last collection of thoughts. Headaches. Back in early 2020 I finally saw a doctor about some bad headaches I’d been getting, which I started calling migraines. I don’t know sometime, whether it’s a normal headache or a migraine, or if people get headaches like I do, or if they are all migraines. In any case, I got some nice prescription medicine that I end up taking about 2 days a month on average for a headache. The medicine tends to work really well, though the side effects are that I feel fuzzy for an hour or more, and generally a bit more tired and thirsty. It’s a decent trade off though, and I’m glad to have the medicine. I can usually feel the headache disappearing into fuzziness in my body, and that’s a real relief. I’m dealing with one right now, which I suspect is also a bit stress related, between pandemic worries, political concerns, and the worries of going to in person teaching next week and getting back online as well…

How is your week at work going? I’m assuming most people are back to work this week after having had some time off, though I know most people don’t get to take two weeks off like I was able to this year. This year there is no spring break from college, it’s just a slog to the end, so wish us luck!

Boxing Day

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate! We had a lovely day off work and today we are going to do some outdoor activities and visit a museum briefly before holing up inside again.

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I didn’t blog earlier because I got into “holiday” mood which meant after I finished teaching I didn’t want to do anything on the computer. The whole month of December felt like just treading water getting to the end of the semester, and while no, things weren’t as busy as normal years, I was so tired of teaching online and really needed a break. I’m glad to be here, and I’m also glad I had a few Christmas gigs to play, either recorded or livestreaming in front of no congregation at the church.

December flew by, didn’t it? I was extra busy with some things at work, an online class and a writing gig I picked up. I also did a lot of baking, as you know, and then put a bunch of goodies into boxes for my parents, my siblings, and my aunt Connie who has been coming to our weekly zoom calls.

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The postal service was destroyed by DeJoy though, and this meant that I couldn’t send “de Joy” before Christmas to my aunt or my brother, since they live too near Philadelphia. My parents, in small town South Carolina got their box in 5 days, my sister Carrie in New York in 1 week, and my sister Leslie in Phoenix in 9 days. The other two are “delayed” and sitting in processing centers. Priority mail flat-rate, y’all, and I worry this Christmas will be the final nail in the coffin as an excuse for the GOP to destroy the USPS for good. Just ask yourselves, why didn’t they hire more workers? They still could. They hired 50,000 extra seasonal workers, but why not more? There are millions upon millions out of work who might have loved a seasonal job for the USPS. Obviously that wasn’t enough people to do the work. I only hope my packages arrive in the next week or so, but I don’t know. I was pleased that the ones that were delivered arrived in good shape, however.

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We finished celebrating Hanukkah and made latkes from scratch twice. I teach late, usually until 8 or 8:30 each night, and it gets dark here at 4:30-4:45 in December, which meant that we didn’t light the candles until I was done working. It was a nice ending to the night, and I also lit an electric menorah in the front since our candlelighting wasn’t able to be in a good window due to the house setup and the cats.

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I kept teaching until the 22nd, mostly because 1) my school job went until then and 2) I have jury duty starting Jan 4 and wanted to start back teaching on the 6th and give two weeks vacation. Nobody was going anywhere really, though more students were traveling and seeing family than I would feel comfortable doing, but what can you do? Also I have my worries about jury duty and it was already canceled before and I feel like it has more reason to be canceled in January than ever, but I also don’t have a good doctor’s excuse to cancel it and I really just want to get it over with.

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I played a livestream service on Christmas Eve and then had a late dinner of appetizers with Louie.

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Shrimp cocktail and a cheese ball. I enjoyed this cheese ball but wished it were more cheddar-y, so I probably won’t make this exact recipe again. We also had some homemade (with alcohol) eggnog I’d made the night before. I fell into the aged eggnog rabbit hole on the internet and may be trying that next year…anybody do aged eggnog?

Louie and I decided not to exchange Christmas gifts (this is our general tradition) so that meant Christmas Day we had literally nothing to do… and it was glorious! We had a late brunch of bagels, smoked salmon, and french omelets, then watched TV all day while Louie worked on putting together a 3D printer for the house. We watched a few Christmas shows first, Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s a Wonderful Life, then watched a few episodes of the Great British Baking Show. We also talked with some family members and sent a lot of text messages.

I made a nice Christmas dinner for us of a Ground Beef Wellington, except with Impossible Beef, creamed spinach, a roasted vegetable salad, and a cranberry mostada. It all turned out really well except the spinach was super bland, which was disappointing as the recipe had looked really promising to me.

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Then back to 3D printer assembling and I started watching Schitt’s Creek, which Louie had seen some of but I had only watched one episode. I think I must have watched 8 more episodes before going to bed! Somewhere in there we had dessert.

I don’t know what led to this, but Louie and I had been talking about fruitcake at some point, and I had been searching the internet and found there was this supposedly delicious fruitcake made by trappist monks in Missouri. So I bought one and it had been waiting until this moment.

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You may have an idea of fruitcake being really bad or bricklike…this fruitcake wouldn’t have appealed to me as a kid, but it was delicious! Full of nuts, fruit, moist cake, and the aroma of rum or brandy or some combination. I thoroughly enjoyed my piece, and there will be more eaten in the future. Perhaps this is a new Christmas tradition.

Anyway, the next week stretches ahead. There isn’t much to do, is there, due to the pandemic. I have a few things I want to do around the house, and of course take down the Christmas decorations before school starts up, but I think I’ll leave them up through the New Year now, and continue enjoying the lights and such. I did do a little needlepoint yesterday and will likely do some of that again.

Happy Christmas to you, if you celebrate. Do you have some days off of work? What are you doing over the break? Did you celebrate the holidays in unusual ways this year?