December 29-January 4: Home, Flamecraft, and Snow

 December 29

Back at home, the days have blurred together. I can re-trace which day I went out for walks by the bubble tea receipts on my credit card, though. CoffeeQuills was on vacation until Jan 5, so I didn't get back to writing or drawing much.  The weather was okay-ish for the area and time of year, so I dragged Eliyahu to the midtown park to go for a walk and bubble tea. I illustrated an Apothecaria entry  in the morning because I'd used up the last fingerpainted one on the 28th. I did another in the evening so that I'd have it ready to post in the morning.

December 30

The weather was once again adequate: time for more walk and bubble tea. I had to trick myself into a third lap. I told Eliyahu I might nope out of the usual third lap (according to Google Fit, each lap is about 1.6 miles; they take us about 25-30 minutes each). As we neared the car, I kept walking, telling myself, "I can go a little farther now and I can always turn back if I really don't want to finish a whole lap." This is one of those "technically true" things I tell myself, knowing full well that I almost never will turn around once I've started. It's like getting myself to start exercising by getting dressed and going out the door: yes, I could stop at that point and go back inside, but if I've gotten this far I never will. 

At the bubble tea place, I got my usual Thai ice tea with boba. During the winter, Eliyahu's been trying a different hot drink each day. This day, they tried Royal Milk Tea. Purportedly, this is a weak tea and relatively low in caffeine.

I illustrated most of the 31st's Apothecaria entry but didn't finish it. I had to draw three figures for it! So much work.

December 31

I finished the entry I'd started on the 30th so I could post it, getting it up a little before noon. 

Eliyahu and I napped through the usual walk window. Also, the weather was sort of miserable and I didn't want to go out that badly anyway. Eliyahu hadn't slept well the night before and thought the caffeine in the tea had too much of an effect on their system.

I got the illustration for the next day's Apothecaria ready to go.

January 1

We got grocery delivery in the morning. After posting the day's Apothecaria, I wrote up my December-in-review post. 

Eliyahu and I went to the midtown park for our walk, and once again I used the "I can stop any time" trick to get myself to finish the third lap. At the midtown bubble tea shop, Eliyahu asked if they had any non-caffeinated drinks beside plain steamed milk. Nope. Alas! They opted out of getting anything. 

I finished the December-in-review post and posted it, and also illustrated the next day's Apothecaria.

January 2

The weather was marginal for walking and we napped through the walking window instead. I drew the next day's Apothecaria in the evening, then started on the year-in-review. Writing about Lut's passing made me tear up, so I asked Eliyahu to play Flamecraft with me instead. It was late so we didn't finish the game, leaving it set up on the kitchen table for later instead.

January 3

Eliyahu hadn't started prayers yet when I got up around 8:15AM, so I told them they could stay home and pray while I drove to the Jewish bakery to get challah for them and bagels for both of us. I watched most of Vicorva's stream from home before setting out, and listened to the rest on the drive. We don't really have to get to the bagel place early to get challah -- they make plenty and it lasts until noon or later -- but it's nice to get fresh bagels for breakfast while I'm there, and getting there early guarantees challah.

The weather in the afternoon was marginal for walking, but it was also as good as the weather would get for the next week. So we made the effort to go out in it, bundling up and driving to the trail, because the bubble tea place near the trail had reopened on January 2. We both like this place better: it's friendlier, less crowded, and has more selection. 

I even wore my coat for this walk! Well, for part of the walk. The weather was too cold for no coat but not cold enough for the coat to be really comfortable, so I kept putting it on and taking it off and leaving it open and whatnot. We took a shorter walk than usual so Eliyahu could be home in time to finish afternoon prayers, but still around an hour.

Eliyahu cooked up some cubed squash they'd gotten from grocery delivery. I worked on my year-in-review post, finishing it this time.  We didn't get around to Flamecraft, which Eliyahu thought was their fault because they were busy cooking, and I thought was my fault because I was busy writing instead of going to the kitchen to play the game with them while they had to be in there keeping an eye on the cooking anyway. So really, that worked out fine.

January 4

I wanted to clean the kitchen, which meant finishing the Flamecraft game so we could put it away and clear off the kitchen table. So we finished the game. Eliyahu spent a chunk of time on their last turn, trying to figure out if they could get the conditions they needed for one moon dragon met. I had them show me what they were trying to do, to see if I could make it work (I'd taken my last turn already, so nothing I did could affect the outcome for me anyway.) I couldn't see any way to make it work, either, so they did their next best option. They had a brief moment of thinking they'd won by a point or two after tallying their points from moon Fancy Dragons, before I ruined it by pointing out that I also had moon Fancy Dragons and hadn't tallied them yet. Aww. They'd been trailing me the whole game, but we'd thought they might win by Fancy Dragons because I only had two for most of the game. But I picked up a few more at the end so no luck.

After we put the game away, I cleaned the kitchen and felt much better for doing so. The kitchen counters had grown overcrowded and it was hard to do anything in there. 

The weather was grim today, with some freezing rain and wintry mix and general dreariness. The weather forecast had a possibility of wintery mix or sleet from Saturday through early Monday morning, I kept the house warmer than usual for most of the weekend and kept my devices topped up on power, in case of an outage. By Saturday evening, it looked like we would get several inches of snow and not an ice storm, which was a relief. Snow, even heavy snow, generally isn't dire for the power grid, but I have vivid memories of the last bad ice storm, which took out power for half the city. Some people didn't get power back for a week, although that time we were one of the lucky groups that had power back after ~12 hours or so.