Thank you @Espiritus_Corvus for this thread! I wish I had been able to see it sooner! I haven’t been especially efficient with time these past few weeks, but at least I got here before 2017 rolls in—Happy New Year’s Eve everyone!
My sister, mom and I made Christmas dinner, which was especially good since my sister made cheesecake and it was simply divine. We just do snacks for New Year’s Eve because after Thanksgiving and Christmas we don’t have any energy left for the multi-day prep of an elaborate dinner, and anyway snacks work better with board games and music.
Christmas morning was nice and quiet, but in a good way, although it was later in the day than most of us wanted (not technically morning once we started… but one of us slept a remarkable number of hours and probably needed it.)
Yesterday my mom, sister and I replaced the garage door mechanism—it was breaking down, not opening reliably and once opening in the middle of the night (one of us was up, heard it, and shut it, so it was spooky but okay.) We’re a reasonably handy family, but it took a surprisingly long time—most of that was negotiating the space in the garage, and trying to find the tools that my dad has strewn about the garage. There were also many more tiny steps than I’d guessed there would be. After that we made a ridiculous amount of guacamole because we had recently bought a ridiculous number of avocados.
We’re taking down the interior Christmas decorations today. We usually wait until the 2nd of January, but we store the Christmas boxes on a structure we built in the garage that hangs down from the ceiling, and we took them down to better reach the garage door mechanism. We’re going to put the decorations away before we put them back up.
No snow here—never any snow here—but we are getting rain. Apparently we’ve gotten enough rain these past couple of months that the drought is less severe than it has been. Just north of us their snow packs are building back up and they might be technically out of “drought” now—farther south they’re still pretty parched.
My plans have shifted. I’m still getting a teaching credential, but it’s in a new area now, and I’m going to be in school for another year after this. What I had planned on doing turned out not to be a good fit for the present me. I’ve been feeling frustrated at myself, but excitement is finally winning out, or the frustration is finally ebbing enough for me to really feel the excitement—this time I know it’s a better fit.
Wishing everyone the best in these final hours of 2016, and continuing into 2017.
Finally, because I have an affinity for xkcd and I think the 2017 comic was especially apt, I thought I’d share
Much love,
Soubresaut