Non-Actionable Puffery

hello my flist! i had such high hopes for the new year and, just, pfft. it's snowflake_challenge season and i haven't even posted for that. oy.

anyway i hope your 2026 has been decent-to-good so far or at least not worse than 2025.

for new year's i went to my sister's and we went out for dinner (delish) and watched a lot of lotr, pausing only to watch the ball drop in times square. i like a good tradition but she may or may not want to do something different this year. we'll see. and for christmas she came to my house and we drove around to look at people's holiday lights and got chinese takeout and watched wake up, dead man on netflix because we both felt too meh to go out. (i liked it but i think i liked the first one the best.) and like four days before that my cousin's youngest kid got married in dc and i brought a cold with me and lost my voice at the wedding. wtf. that made it very difficult to talk to cousins which did not stop me. but it also meant i was still sick or recovering for the entirety of my time off. whiiine. at least i had two weeks off to cough up a lung and sit on my couch and be tired, rather than having to take sick days or work from home a lot. but still! i had a lot of time off and couldn't even enjoy most of it! and i had plans! which were mostly "watch tv, work on holiday project for writing group, start pumpkin spice cross stitch". sigh.

(while in dc my sister and i did a little sightseeing, which included a farmer's market down the street from the hotel - it was SO WINDY but there were lots of dogs - a walk around the washington monument, a stroll down the reflecting pool, and a little talk by a park ranger in the lincoln memorial.)

we got snow a couple times tho, that was nice. i'm a big fan of waking up to snow on the ground. :D especially new year's day! it was just enough to shovel but if it had been, say, four inches, i would've enjoyed that too.

during my time off i met admin s who works at the libraries for lunch and a week later i met one of the admins m for lunch and both of those things were really nice, partly because i enjoy a lunch out and partly because it was just nice to see people. and i never see admin s because i don't work with her any more. i also had mexican brunch with tamalinn and friend a and friend a's hubs and that was fun and also delicious. and saturday i got a haircut. :D

before the haircut i went to cousins j&m's for brunch and to say hi and goodbye to their kids before they went back to school, and friday night my sister and i took cousin p on dad's side out for dinner for her birthday. it was yummy (i had black pasta with shrimp and calamari) and they brought cousin p a slice of flourless chocolate cake for her birthday. my sister and i ate most of it.

work re-entry was fine and going to campus was weird because it's been like three weeks since i was there. classes don't start until february so it's very quiet but again, it's nice to see people.

things i did in november and december:

went record album/antique shopping with tamalinn and friend a and bought the go-gos' beauty and the beat, heart's little queen, and a cookbook from the 50s full of buffet recipes
saw wicked pt 1 (again) in preparation for seeing wicked pt 2
went out to dinner with my sister and cousin j (of j&m)
fetched the mothership at the airport for tday
went out for bday dinner with mom, sister, cousins j&r, and the aforementioned lone cousin j
got snowed on in harvard square :DDD
had brunch with cousins from mom's side
bought a dress for the wedding
did not need to buy shoes
had dinner with cousins from dad's side
had mom and sister over for dinner (i made pork chops because i could)
went to j&m's for tday
ate a lot
saw wicked pt 2 (not bad but i liked pt 1 better, also why did the story have to be two movies?)
went to snowport (boston holiday market, down by the seaport) where i bought a print of a pickle sign and saw the lobster nativity
borrowed a bolero jacket from one of the admins m for the wedding because the dress is sleeveless and it was a jewish wedding and i'd have to cover my shoulders
went to the holiday market at the somerville armory and bought a blockprint of a medieval looking fish and a print of my favorite local bridge
one of the vendors had a print with a drawing of a guillotine and the legend "a better world is possible!" heh.
watched red one (so cute, so silly)
went to friend r's to watch the thin man because it's set around christmas and while i don't know how successful it was as a murder mystery i liked nick and nora as a couple and overall enjoyed it
saw the housemaid (had some twists i appreciated and i liked it)
curled lots, made a couple good shots and a lot more acceptable-to-missed shots
finished the lowdown (liked it, recommend it, didn't love the way the murder plot shook out)
watched talasmasca: the secret order (partly because of elizabeth mcgovern going "talamasssca" in the trailers) (mostly liked it altho i didn't really like the protagonist - he thought he was the smartest person in the room and every time he got in over his head, which was pretty much the entire show, women showed up to get him out of trouble)
watched hysteria! (about a high school heavy metal garage band that pretends to be a satanic cult to get fans, and then shit goes off the rails) (it's set in 1987 and got a lot of the satanic panic right but was otherwise only glancingly historical which made me twitch. was fun altho did i mention it went totally off the rails?)
rewatched stranger things s1-s4 with folks on discord in preparation for s5
watched s5 (i have mixed feelings about the season as a whole but i was pretty satisfied with how it ended)

so this news is massachusetts based and one of my friends even works for massdot and DID NOT TELL ME and i had to learn from a snowflake challenge from someone who doesn't even live here and now i share with you the winners of the name-a-snowplow contest. the entries all came from public school classrooms (k-8) and the plows are in service this winter. sleet caroline! clearopathra! you're killing me squalls! read and giggle.

speaking of mass, the boston aquarium built an old folks home for their geriatric penguins. how cute is that?

in the wake of dump and his administration cutting funding to universities mackenzie scott (aka the former mrs jeff bezos) donated $80m to howard university, an hbcu (historically black colleges and universities, for the non-americans in the audience), which is one of the biggest single donations in the school's history. she got billions of dollars when she split from jeff and she's definitely using her powers for good.

i know thanksgiving was last year and these are probably quite sold out but i must share the "no-thanks" jell-o molds. you could get canberry canned cranberry jelly, pecan pie, and brussel sprouts. i don't like brussel sprouts at all but the round little molds are so cute.

joe keery officiated a wedding in his scoops ahoy uniform. for the stranger things fen in the audience. :D

i must share one of the scariest videos i've ever seen - a guy climbing up and then skiing down mt everest with no supplemental oxygen. i'm sorry, but watching him ski down that mountain, especially from the top, is fucking terrifying. i'm not afraid of heights but absolutely not, no way.

sir david attenborough sends a hedgehog on its way. to end with something cute.

dave grohl vs animal drum battle. and something fun. :D