Winter Sundays are the best. The fireplace is going. Football is on TV. I’m sitting next to the window, gazing out at the foot-and-a-half of snow currently blanketing the ground right I am wearing fuzzy slippers and snuggled under a fuzzy blanket with Tallulah. It really doesn’t get much better than this.
New Year’s Eve was a quiet affair. Holly spent the night with her best friend, so it was just Jim, the dogs, and me. We spent the evening binge-watching both seasons of Derry Girls on Netflix. Neither Jim nor I have laughed as much as we did while watching that show. All new years should start with laughter, don’t you think?
The Derry Girls soundtrack is fabulous as well. Granted, Jim and I are children of the late 80s/early 90s, so the music played on the show was right in our wheelhouse. I found a playlist on Spotify yesterday and rocked out to it while cleaning. It will definitely be on repeat this week as Holly goes back to school and Jim goes back to his job hunt.
The other thing that brightened our week was the Faded Flannel Virtual Festival SiriusXM’s Lithium channel broadcast all day on January 1st. It included live performances from every major grunge and alternative band from the 90s, without waiting for teardown and setup between each performance. It was just awesome. If you have a SiriusXM subscription, you can still listen to it. Just search on the app under Faded Flannel.
I finished my first two books of the year right away and am settling into my third, which also happens to be my second fantasy novel of the year. I also started my first audiobook, a nonfiction assessment of Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief. In other words, my year in books is going to be fantasy-heavy but as incredibly eclectic as it has been in years past!
The holidays did me in with cooking, so I took off the last week. Thankfully, we had enough leftovers to fill in that gap. The plan this week is to keep meals simple and easy, especially as Holly heads back to virtual school and dance classes on top of her regular work schedule. Complicated recipes are fun to make but sometimes simple is best. I do want to try my hand at yeasted bread this week and want to make barmbrack, an Irish tea bread standard around Halloween but perfect for the winter months.
Hopefully, I will get to spend this week finally unpacking my books. Jim is currently sanding down the shelves and prepping them for trim work, the final pieces of the puzzle. I already went through my book lists and identified the books I want to purge based on Goodreads ratings. I may purge more once I pick up each book and look at it again. With 100 boxes to empty, I imagine it will take me the better part of a day or more to fill the shelves, but I’m looking forward to it. I miss having my books on display.
What is everyone doing today? What plans do you have for the upcoming week?
Unpacking your books will be like meeting up with old friends!
It very much was!
I was reading most of the day…and napping, not going to lie.
Kim and I love Derry Girls. We hope there’s a third season.
I find my napping desire completely gone now that I don’t work. The exception to that is if I have a migraine, and then all I want to do is sleep.
Oh, I hope there is a third season! That cast is great together. I am also extremely partial to Michelle and Sister Michael.
Man, sounds like you are really living it up. That cozy fire scene sounds so perfect.
No plans here really. I am off this week but return to the grind on 1/11. That will be a dark day in hell. Many of my coworkers took an early exit offer to avoid layoffs and so when I return virtually, we will be down a number of people. Nobody to do those jobs and no one to fill them due to salary savings. I am envisioning a lot more work. Maybe not. We shall see.
I am itching to go through my books. I’ve been reading and giving books away lately. I really only keep books that speak to me in some way but somehow, my shelves have grown during the pandemic. I want to watch a funny movie and just sit on the floor with them to figure out what stays.
Jim is working on finishing the bookshelves as I type this. Hopefully, by next Sunday, I will be able to have gotten rid of most of the boxes and get my family room back into some semblance of order. There isn’t much to do these days other than fuss about the house, bake, read, and watch TV.