- It's the first day of winter today/solstice -- the shortest/darkest day of the year -- the turning point before we start heading back into the light. Hopefully figuratively as well as literally.
- It's 7 a.m. as I type this, and still pitch black outside. (I turned on the Christmas tree lights when I got up, and they look so pretty, glowing against the darkness outside the window.) I checked online -- the sun won't rise for almost another hour, until 7:50. And it will set again around 4:45 p.m.
- When we were working & commuting, this meant that it was still dark when we arrived downtown in the morning, and dark again as our train pulled out of the station heading home at night. If I didn't make a conscious effort to go outside or near a window during the day, I literally would not see daylight until the weekend!
- I should be home (i.e., at my parents' house) right now. :( Traditionally, we've flown home on or around the weekend before Christmas. :( So I'm feeling a little sorry for myself at the moment...
- Apologies if I've been wallowing lately. This blog has been a great outlet!
- I get weather app alerts for my parents' location as well as my own, and it looks like there's a big winter storm heading their way Tuesday. The weather there has been relatively mild lately, but that's about to change!
- I can only remember one or two years when we didn't have a white Christmas, i.e., at least SOME snow covering the ground. One was in 1997, the year before my grandfather died. Parents' Neighbours' Daughter (PND)'s dad & brothers posed for a photo outside in their shorts, holding up a sign saying "Christmas 1997," lol. (It wasn't THAT warm, but...!) My mom asked my grandfather, who was then 85, if he could remember another Christmas without snow, and he couldn't.
- Here, we've had snow on & off over the past few weeks but nothing that has really accumulated or stayed. Temperatures have mostly hovered just above or just below freezing. We're due for a few flurries on & off this week, but a white Christmas? We'll see...
- One thing that made me feel better yesterday afternoon: my sister called me & said, "I'm sending you a Zoom link to test." I opened the link and up popped my sister & her boyfriend... and PND & the Little Princesses, decorating Christmas cookies! Then they managed to get my parents linked into the call as well. We're going to do it again on Christmas Eve. I'll also be Zooming with some of my cousins earlier in the evening.
- Another thing that's keeping a smile on my face right now: the East Pointers, the Prince Edward Island-based band (East Coast/folk music) that brought us "Annedemic" earlier in the pandemic (a nightly chapter-by-chapter reading of L.M. Montgomery's "Anne of Green Gables," which I wrote about here) are currently in the middle of a five-night chapter-by-chapter reading of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." This is not by any means a professional production -- but that's part of its charm. Night #2 (Saturday) had both the guys on screen and viewers (including me!) dissolving into frequent fits of laughter as they read (using different voices for the different characters -- verging into Monty Python territory for the women's voices, lol). ;) They had to stop a couple of times because the wind outside was so strong, the noise was interfering with the sound (!). But the story of the Christmas Eve party at Fezziwig's was delivered masterfully, accompanied by live fiddle music in the background! And each night wraps up with a few tunes too -- I dare you to listen without tapping your feet, lol. I'm enjoying it all hugely. If you missed it live, or need to catch up, you can watch the videos later on the band's Facebook page, here.
- (Do you think I could claim this as another book read on my Goodreads 2020 challenge?? lol -- Hey, it's almost like an audiobook...!)(I'm actually tempted to download a copy to my e-reader and follow along as they read!)
- Notable recent posts from other CNBC bloggers:
- Jess has a wonderful post about reclaiming holiday joy. "Everyone deserves some magic!" she says -- yes, even (especially!) when you don't have kids!
- Pamela wrote a fabulous piece about Kamala Harris & the "momification" of women in politics for Atta Girl, a new publication by Medium (and expanded on her thoughts in her blog).
You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.
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