Almost all of my Christmas shopping has been online. Finally got out for a few analog retail errands and it was surprisingly not insane.
Grateful to not have to get out much until Christmas Eve Mass on Tuesday. Fingers crossed that I can log out a little early from work that day.
Made my first batch of holiday fudge last night; F brought a big container of it to share with her D&D group this afternoon.
I used to make five or six varieties every December to give out. Haven’t done that in a couple of years. Not feeling it again this year.
That said, I’ll make more regular fudge and some ube fudge, and make some candied almonds. Maybe a batch of cookies. All pretty simple. But I’m not getting ambitious like I have in the past.
Generally pretty low energy this season. Hard to tell if it’s related to physical health, grief, or depression — or all three.
I look forward to having Christmas come and go, leaving that “dead week” through New Year’s Day without all the holiday pressure. At least I have something to look forward to.
Feels like a remarkable number of baseball legends died this past year. This list that ran with Rickey Henderson’s obit in the NY Times is startling.
Happy seasonal Caturday.
Husband found the weighted blanket I feared had ended up into a Goodwill pile.
I am never leaving my recliner again.
Finally getting around to watching “Fellowship of the Ring.” A lot of the teenager’s D&D recaps are starting to make sense to me now.
Just finished binging the second season of “Somebody Somewhere.” I’ve never felt closer emotionally to a show and its characters, and that’s saying an awful lot.
Whoever came up with the phrase “no regrets” clearly never had a McRib sandwich.
Finally got around to watching my first episode of “Somebody Somewhere,” and I would probably still be binging it were it not for stupid stuff like sleep and work.
So sad to see so many restaurants closing around these parts. The longtime supper club in town just shut down this week, and a crepes place is closing next month. Just learned a Filipino restaurant I finally got to visit in Wheaton closed down.
Really hoping this isn’t a harbinger of a steep downturn.
I think I have finally made my peace with Threads. Yes, it’s run by an evil billionaire (though slightly less evil than Elon Musk), it’s got terrible functionality, and the posts can be deeply annoying and full of scraped content and engagement bait. (And now it’s starting to add recommended followers in my notifications, which I’m trying to turn off.)
But I like a lot of the Threads community when you filter out the cloying, whiny, scrapy, baity stuff. (It got really bad after the election.) And if you game the algorithm enough – if you must go with the “for you” feed – the posts can be tolerable.
And yes, this means the social media pendulum has swung for me once again, and I’ve grown weary of Bluesky’s own irritating traits, like the relative radio silence and rising tide of follows from “resistance” accounts and donation solicitors. So at this point, I’m just dual-posting shorter stuff from here and trying to avoid spending a ton of time consuming either Bluesky or Threads.
I have finally consumed my first Starbucks cranberry bliss bar of the season. The holidays can officially begin.
New mini-journal.
I never thought I’d have a job that made my old wire service gig, which I hated with a white hot passion, look like a walk in the park. But here we are.
The White Trophy Husband and I went to Seafood City today, stocked up on frozen lumpia, and bought enough Filipino groceries to last us maybe a week. This should take care of my cravings for ube ice cream and pandesal and pork siopao for a while.
Oh, and Jollibee. We did not forget the Jollibee.
I am now recovering from all the crowds, Christmas music in Tagalog, and strobe-lit parols (some playing holiday tunes, others dressed up in neon!) on the recliner; about to shut my eyes from the sensory overload. Maligayang pasko, bitches.
I asked the teenager, who is not a fan of news these days for the sake of her mental health, whether she has been keeping up with news about Luigi Mangione and the CEO shooting.
“Not willingly,” she said.
“New Jersey Mystery Drone” is my new band name.
I reactivated my Facebook account so I could get back into my other Meta accounts. Now I can’t remember how the hell to re-deactivate it. So over Meta.
Almost done with my first left-handed Field Notes knockoff. Using these as mini-journals for lists, random thoughts, and venting. These are much less intimidating and more welcoming than fancier journals. After years of trying to keep a diary of one kind of another, I think I’m onto something.
Watching people melting down online over their parasocial relationship with an alleged assassin was not on my bingo card this morning.
It gets so exhausting to be chronically sad.
Watched “My Neighbor Totoro” for the sixth or seventh time (third or fourth in a theater). It’s not the very best of Studio Ghibli—that would be “Spirited Away” or “Tale of the Princess Kaguya,” probably—but “Totoro’s” classic sweetness never wears thin.
The homily at my parish is always a crapshoot. One Sunday it’s an excellent Advent exhortation by one supply priest to be prepared for Christ; the next Sunday it could be a warning from another supply priest that plants bought from a Masonic yard sale could bring Satan into your household.
Ever have a day where you feel so overwhelmed and out of control at the end of your work week that you desperately need Vietnamese comfort food and an avocado shake for dinner to calm you down?
Only me? Oh.
This may explain why I am so deeply uncomfortable with the whole “extend your life to 100+ years” thing: “Never die? The dangers of transhumanism in the 21st century” (America magazine).