SD 2074–2122: How about that Thanksgiving? How about that December? How about that New Year’s? How about that illegal declaration of war?
While smart apostrophes are sometimes a pain, I wish they would work in the Gutenberg editor where they would be appreciated. Well. What have I done?
Celebrated a successful third annual Manos Day with some arts and crafts.
I successfully avoided climbing into the rift for my safety. However I probably need to resubscribe to Netflix one of these days.
I tied a tie from memory of watching YouTube videos years ago and went to brunch. Don’t look too closely at the knot. It’s the tho(ugh)t that counts.
I continued my Thanksgiving tradition of watching the Chicago Thanksgiving Parade, Presented by Forv/s Mazars.
We had a very lovely dinner with friends and our regular gracious hosts Anne and Renee.
The food this year was incredible.
Then we had an early snow storm.
We decorated for Christmas and made the place cozy.
I made a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. Only a week or two late. In my defense, all the stores I looked at were out of ground cloves and we weren’t feeling quite adventurous enough to grind our own. And by we I mean me.
Work had a lovely holiday party.
Us developers are very cool and normal. Totally espresso martini pilled and festive maxing.
I mentioned our home was festive, right? Saffron’s been doing great. She came over and helped us decorate the tree but generally ignored it otherwise, other than trying to open a couple presents early.
I’ve received many compliments on this year’s Christmas card, concept via Matt. The art was a struggle as I wanted to use oil pastels and that did not work out at all. I scraped off the pastels and then painted on top with acrylic to then use a mix of gouache and acrylic and detailing in regular chalk pastels. My white acrylic went missing as well so was getting anxious working with a small tube of white gouache. But it all worked out! And then colors shifted when scanning because would you believe that the tree had orange ornaments in addition to red?
Derek, Kevin and his friend and I attempted to go to the opening of the new Sonic pop-up. Derek and I had to bail early on the line, but we did at least get to meet our hero in the line.
Then it was off to St. Paul for Christmas via Amtrak with Matt and Dane (he’s the tree)!
It was a very nice family holiday celebration. It was great to finally have Matt and Dane with me for the first time.
Dane made sure to stay well rested.
Matt loves the holidays and a chance to serve.
Patrick let us help put together his six person tree build.
We went bowling for the first time in forever. I did terribly, but at least I won $50 in pull tabs.
Train home was through a very serene snowstorm, only for it to turn to train once we hit Chicago. Once again very thankful for the new Borealis service which left a minute early. The Empire Builder apparently arrived 8 hours late.
Then had a lovely New Year’s Eve at a party hosted by a friend of Jeremy and Derek’s with great food, drinks, and company.
Everything is perfect and normal and I am very excited for it to be Monday again soon.
Oh also I spent fart too much time playing Foundation to get this.
