I had honestly forgotten about it being New Year's Eve until someone within earshot began shooting off fireworks about five minutes ago. Been busy, yes, baking bread. I'm trying to hold back on talking about using my bread machine all the time, but look what happened today:
Tap and Master Yoda must be planning a big night. The latter is ready to go, the former seems to need a little more nap time.
Today, I watched two movies. First, "The Happiest Season," which you can find on hulu. Briton liked it, and so did I. It's not too deep, but is pretty good-looking and has some good performances. Second, "Snowpiercer," which I had seen before. Three very favorites of mine there: Chris Evans, John Hurt, and Ed Harris.
I'm working on two knitting projects: yet another Wingspan, and a feather and fan scarf with lots of complementing Koigu colors.
I've heard from one friend and one family member in Nashville who said they felt the shaking after the bombing on Christmas Morning. They live very different distances from Downtown, which is testament to the force of the explosion. Very scary and, though it's been a real long time since I've been Downtown there, very upsetting and sad.
I've made two loaves of bread since Christmas, one honey wheat and one chocolate mint. I gave both Briton and Hannah a hot pot for Christmas, and she has suggested she and I have a bread / soup swap in the near future.
We've had two types of weather lately. You're either fine with a light jacket or it is so cold it almost takes your breath away when you step outside.
Two of Hannah's and two of Briton's gifts haven't arrived yet.
I don't really think either of them needs more, though, do you?
Depending upon when you might have come into this house today, you would have smelled:
Green bean casserole
Stuffing
Garlic and herb bread
Sugar cookies
M & M cookies
Ham
Apple caramel cookies
Pecan pie
Onion bread
There are no pictures because you needn't see how crazy and cluttered and sink-full-of-various-baking-and-cooking-things it was in my kitchen. But once all of that was done, I sat down and polished my nails. Now, I wouldn't usually polish my nails when they're this short, but, hey, it's Christmas and I got these tiny decals. So, a little sparkle and a great big wish for you to have a wonderful Christmas Eve and a happy and magical Christmas Day.
Advent calendars are favorite things around here. For a couple of years, I bought myself a yarn/project one from Jimmy Beans Wool, and the last one came like this:
It struck me last year that I could make my own calendar by filling those drawers with little treats throughout the year. I've been opening one a day, and among the favorite things I squirreled away for myself were two pins from The Clever Clove. First, a yarn shop that could not be any cuter:
Late yesterday afternoon, I realized I was feeling sort of cold, so I got up to check the thermostat, and it was 60 degrees in the house. I cranked the heat all the way up, but nothing happened. As in the furnace didn't even turn on. So in went a call to my heating guys, like 10 minutes before they were set to close. I got the voice mail, and left a message, and began trying to figure out what to do.
There's a Lowe's just a little over a mile from here, so I went to its website and ordered space heaters that I could run down and pick up curbside. I got three: one for the cats' room, one for my bedroom, one for the den. Now, the last trip I made to Lowe's was to buy all this. I joked with the woman who brought all that out that there was little doubt what was going on at my house that night. Made the same joke to a different employee last night.
Finally got a call from the heating company, letting me know that no one would be available to come out until this morning. Since I had the heaters, that didn't sound quite so bad. Besides, I had come across these floofy legwarmer-looking socks the other day, and they came in quite handy.
To wrap all this up as quickly as possible: turned out that the "board" of the furnace was broken/burned out. The "board" is sort of the "brain," and the furnace can't run without it. And the heating company most likely didn't have one on hand, would have to order one on Monday, and had no way of knowing when it would come in and when they'd be able to come back and put it in.
I pretty much deflated.
Until I realized that the van was staying in the driveway an awfully long time after I'd paid for the service call, and the technician came back to the door to tell me that he'd made a couple of phone calls. He'd found someone who was willing to go to the warehouse and see if there was a new board, and if there was, he'd get it and come back and install it.
Which they did. And he did.
Several days in a row this week, Tap and I have been weather-ed out of walks. We took one today, but it was cold. This from me, lover and craver of Winter. Those of you in the Northeast, I envy your snow and hope I have an opportunity to take Tap out into a snowfall someday.
I have an obsessive need to give Hannah and Briton the same number of presents each Christmas. This year, my method is this:
I'm putting their gifts in separate boxes. We'll be carrying them into Hannah's place, so boxes are where everything would wind up anyway.
By the way, I've always been a fan of matryoshka present packing. Put a little gift in increasingly larger boxes so that, say, a watch might wind up inside a boots box. It makes guessing what any given package might be a real chore.
Do you have any wrapping "tricks"?
. . . read other comments on blogs or Facebook before you leave one? I don't. I think it's like reading other people's mail --- none of my business. Strictly between the commentor and the author.
. . .mind spoilers for movies and TV shows? I don't. There may be individual cases along when I want to be kept in the dark (don't tell me who won "Great British Bake Off}, but in general I don't mind.
. . .have ingredients or flavors that automatically make food or drink appeal to you? I've got a bunch: green onions, sour cream, blue cheese, caramel, spearmint, white cheddar, ranch, toffee, pecans, honey, lime, more that aren't coming to mind at the moment.
. . .love to zsush your scissors through wrapping paper? Yeah, me, too. In fact, I'm disappointed when that doesn't happen.
Tap and I took a walk through the neighborhood this morning, and everything was going smoothly
until . . .
Tap will, without fail, stop and turn around toward home when he feels we've gone far enough on our walks. Even if I'm game for going further, he is having none of it. And as soon as the inflatable yard decorations hit his field of vision, he stopped and spun so quickly that the leash knocked my phone out of my hand.
Honestly, it was kind of funny.
I've had my first one degree of separation experience with COVID-19. I found out today that an online knitting friend has been sick for a while. Then I learned that the father of a friend since high school died last night of COVID complications. Please think of both of them if you would, please.
My plumbing problem finally got solved today. I tried all day yesterday to handle it myself, but nothing was working. It turned out that roots from a couple of holly bushes had caused a blockage. I am definitely going to have to get someone here to pull the bushes out completely, and I might need to get a length of pipe replaced. The plumber did say that things should be okay or "a while," so there's no special rush.
Briton and his podcastmates have just started talking about The Muppets and their movies. He is beside himself because, as he has said there before, he was raised on them. (He's also told people that Abraham Lincoln and Jim Henson were treated as near-deities in his familial home.) ANYway, he and the other two guys spent a few minutes talking about which Muppet they would each be. As a sucker for quizzes and such, I naturally looked up several "Which Muppet Am I?"s, took them, and got varied results.
I changed my theme here because, even though I prefer the Christmas-y star, it was hard to read the print against that background. Keep in mind that I am thinking of the background now as Christmas lights, one of My Favorite Things EVER.
Have any of you had those long strips of air-filled "pillows" used in packing?
Well, it's an animal, I'll give you that much of a clue. But what kind of animal? You can leave guesses in the comments, and mayb...
