Day 273: Vacation Time & Gratitude

Today is Friday, the end of another work week. Luckily for me, I am at the beginning stages of a project. That means I can work on anything I like, and I have zero deadline stress. Plus, I have enough vacation time left to take both holiday weeks off, so next week will be my last workweek for the year. Hooray!

Today I’d also like to give a little shout-out to my employers, anonymously but heartfelt. They gave us extra bonuses this year, a gift card so we could buy ourselves a nice dinner in lieu of the annual holiday luncheon, extra sick time (if needed) for Covid, and far more guidance for dealing with the pandemic than we got from any level of government. They did everything possible to allow employees to telecommute 100%, even going as far as to buy printers for people who didn’t already have them at home. This year was my 25th work anniversary, and they not only remembered but also sent a gift. The real reward for my 25 years, though, is to be working for them now, and to have that dependability in my life when so many other things are falling apart. Hooray for all of this, too!

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Day 272: Album

I started working on my annual photo album tonight. If I had serious intentions of finishing it on time, I should have started it a while ago. So, I’m not going to stress over it, and I will not allow it to distract me from finishing more important shopping and shipping tasks. I’ll just continue working on it at an easy pace. If it gets done on time, yay. If not, no biggie.

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Quick Reviews from 2020

Here are some quick reviews of books I read in 2020. It was supposed to be the post from Day 139, but I didn’t finish it in time.

  • Into the Darkness by Barbara Michaels, B+: The granddaughter of a famous jeweler inherits half of his flagship store. The other half goes to his protege, about whom very little is known. With several men vying for her attentions and a secret enemy sending threats to her and her family, she’s unsure of whom to turn to for help. This one started out good and then fizzled. Disappointing.
  • Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins, A-: This was a quick, easy, fun read about a boy who falls into a world below New York City that is populated by not only people but also large, sentient variants of city vermin. Surprisingly recommended.
  • Prince of Darkness by Barbara Michaels, F: This story is a little different for Michaels in that the main viewpoint character is a man rather than a woman. The man insinuates himself into the household of a wealthy woman and her niece and tries, for reasons we can only guess at initially, to trick them into believing they’re being haunted. But he’s not the only one playing tricks. This actually isn’t Michaels’s worst novel in terms of story or writing. The failing grade comes primarily from the offensive language used to describe people of color. Though the sole black character is one of the good guys (arguably the only genuinely good guy), and though Michaels’s intention might have been to highlight the racism of the bad guys and contrast it with the moral clarity of the black character, the language was upsetting and IMHO unnecessary. There are also several instances of a man striking the woman with whom he had a romantic relationship, and that was also unnecessary. Keeping in mind that Michaels wrote the book in the late ’60s, and societal attitudes have changed, I’ll grant her forgiveness, but the book is not a keeper.
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Day 271: Choice Made Easy

I ordered our Christmas cards last night. Choosing a picture for the card was a simple matter this year. We hardly went anywhere or did anything over the course of the year, so I didn’t take as many pictures as I usually do. With such few options, I was able to settle on a picture easily.

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Day 270: Walking on Ice

Who wants to walk in 20-degree weather? I do, apparently, or at least I didn’t let the cold stop me from walking yesterday or today. Parts of the driveway still have a coating of ice and snow, so I have had to be very careful. I wouldn’t want to fall.

The thought of falling while walking always brings to mind my coworker, Susan, who fell and broke her hip when she was just a few years older than I am now. It wasn’t what killed her (she died years later), but I believe it was the beginning of the end for her. It made her prematurely old, frailer than she ought to have been for her age.

I do not need an extra problem like that in my life. Things are already too grim. I’ve been getting by pretty well to all outward appearances, but only because I’ve been carefully limiting my exposure to unhappy things, picking my way across the ice in the metaphorical sense, too. Now is a time to be cautious of everything.

P.S. I ordered an axolotl sticker for Marshall last week, and it arrived today in the mail. He decided to name the axolotl, and of all the names in the world, he chose Susan. What are the odds?

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Day 269: Ideas Needed

I need to come up with some new ideas for the Advent calendar ASAP. I have very few ideas left and a lot of days to cover. When we get to the end of December and look back, this month will have seemed to fly by in a blur. But right now, Advent seems like it will never end.

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Day 268: Celebrations

  • My niece’s drive-by birthday celebration was today. Everybody who was part of the “parade” met up in a large parking lot, then drove by her house one by one, horns a-honking, stopping just long enough drop off a gift and grab a few a cupcakes in return (or, in our case, more cupcakes than we would ever allow the children to eat, because Auntie always gives us extra desserts). As we were the last in the parade, we pulled into the driveway and briefly chatted with my SIL outside, the first real social contact I’ve had since forever. It was nice, even if we couldn’t see each other’s faces because of the masks.
  • Last night’s craft party went well. Here are some of the ornaments that we made.
Excepting the ghosts, these ornaments are wood cutouts that Livia, my husband, and I colored with markers and decorated with various craft supplies, including glitter glue, jewels, pompoms, tissue paper, and feathers. Marshall has been on a ghost kick since we made our Halloween decorations. Having made pilgrim ghosts for Thanksgiving and a birthday ghost for his Dad’s birthday, he has now moved on to Christmas ghosts. They are cute additions to our holiday decor.
  • I have already prepped the kids’ Advent tickets for tomorrow and the following day. Sometimes I amaze myself, which is good, because it helps to offset all the times I disappoint myself :p
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Day 266: Expiration Dates

Today I discovered yet another peril of online Christmas shopping: a sale that expired as I was shopping, making everything in my cart suddenly quite a bit more expensive. <sigh>

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Day 265: All Good News

On Monday we had a storm with high winds and downpours. The wind nearly knocked our power out several times, and it did knock out the cable system, leaving us without Internet and home phone for the entire night. But, I am grateful, because no trees or tree parts fell on us, we did not lose power, and though the rain fell heavily enough to form a pond in the back yard, it didn’t reach flood level. Plus, with our Netflix out of commission, I convinced my husband to finally move a disk-player into my office so that I could have my annual pre-Christmas viewing of Die Hard.

As if that weren’t enough good news, on Tuesday I found that the Sometimes Stream had started flowing again for the first time in many months. Welcome back, water!

Sometimes Stream

The latest drought map was published today. I checked it, because we’ve gotten a lot of rain lately, and I was hoping that our drought status had changed. I’m happy to report that it has. We are now rated “Abnormally Dry,” which is the lowest drought level and a big change from two months ago, when we were in the “Extreme Drought” category. That is very good news!

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Day 264: Springtails on Waterslides

On Thanksgiving we noticed that there were tiny bugs all over everything outside, including our trash and recycling bins, even our front door. It was an overcast day and none of the pictures I took turned out very good, but here’s a shot that will give you a rough idea of what they looked like:

Mystery Bugs on the Recycling Bin
They might be some type of springtail, perhaps globular springtails.

When it started to rain, the bugs on top of the recycling bin headed for the sides of the lid, where they were swept from one end to the other by swift streams of rainwater, like waterslides for bugs. It was a fun thing to watch. However, I was not so amused today when I found some of these bugs inside a package that had been left on my front walk. If they are the type of bug that I think they are, they’re unlikely to infest my home, but still, I would prefer that they stay out of my stuff!

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