Unboxing Day

December 26, 2022 2:57 AM

Hello, friends, welcome to Monday — and, for some of you, Boxing Day. But this thread is here to say, don't box it, unbox it! Let loose your comments, links, aphorisms, jingles, jangles, rhymes and riddles here! Fly your flag, free your sails, tell your tales, let it out!

and please enjoy your last free thread of 2022! 🎉⌛️🎊

posted by taz (75 comments total)

Santa brought my husband and me Covid. Must have been naughty.
posted by kiwi-epitome at 5:12 AM on December 26, 2022 [9 favorites]

Tom Cardy - "Naughty or Nice" (Official Music Video)
posted by flabdablet at 5:16 AM on December 26, 2022

I make a LOT of cookies for the extended family every Xmas (seriously: 1500 or so cookies come out of the oven in mid-December). My grandmother used to work from this recipe, but she is gone. My dad took it over, but he lives three time zones away now, so it falls to me.

I also do some for our neighbours. (We live in the middle of five townhouses, and the other four all have families with young kids.)

When I went to deliver these to my next-door neighbour on the 24th, her five-year-old peered through the blinds at me before the mom came to the door.

She thanked me for the cookies and wished me a merry Christmas; I left and five seconds later she opened the door to report that her son had just asked, “Was that Santa Claus?”
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:55 AM on December 26, 2022 [18 favorites]

I make a LOT of cookies ...
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:55 AM on December 26 [+] [!]


there's a word for this, I just know it...
posted by From Bklyn at 6:05 AM on December 26, 2022 [15 favorites]

I got a new humidifier for Christmas. For my guitars. I'm simultaneously thrilled and ashamed.
posted by tommasz at 6:07 AM on December 26, 2022 [11 favorites]

I printed out 2 copies of the robot advent calendar taz linked in a previous free thread, and put them out by my colored pencils for my partner and I to color. I only colored one robot all month (December kind of got away from me) but he diligently colored in a robot each day. On Christmas, I opened up a gift to find a set of Prismacolor pencils because, apparently, the Rose Art cheapos I provided for advent robots sucked. Maybe now I'll go back and color in my neglected robots!
posted by the primroses were over at 6:34 AM on December 26, 2022 [8 favorites]

We learned how sick a dog can get after she ate a large portion of pumpkin rum cake

(Answer: very, very sick all night long)
posted by jazon at 6:53 AM on December 26, 2022 [6 favorites]

We have two long-term foster cats who came from a serious hoarding situation. They’ve been here for about a year and a half. Grace, the more timid one, has come a long way from the emaciated and traumatized thing she was on arrival, but she’s still very timid and is mostly content to curl up in some comfortable safe spots she has in my closet. Lately I’ve been increasing the amount of time I spend trying to interact with her, and she rewarded me with a lovely Xmas present last night. She came up onto my bed and hung out there for hours, and let me pet her a lot there. I was out of bed at the time, and she wouldn’t stay if I tried to lay down with her. But she kept coming back and got really into the petting. I think she might finally, finally, be starting to come around.
posted by notoriety public at 7:07 AM on December 26, 2022 [37 favorites]

Getting real sick of the US govt.s attacking the rights of women and LGBT people. Now that I've figured out how secular Xmas directly supports this Cristian hegemony and their rule over the rest of us, I've stopped stopped celebrating it. It just feels gross to rail against the Dobbs decision and then turn around and put a Santa hat a few months later. And I certainly don't want to tell my kid we are doing some weird pantomime for a religion we don't even follow just bc it's expected of us as white people in the US.

If you are not a Christian yet still celebrate it for some reason, I encourage you to consider stopping. You can still gather with family and exchange gifts etc. Just do it for Yule or Solstice or anything that doesn't have an active agenda of harming my friends and family.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:09 AM on December 26, 2022 [7 favorites]

running my first D&D one-shot today! the player characters are all different animal/human species who make up Father Jollyjelly's Dashing Steeds, the elite team of bodyguards who defends the sleigh from shadow creatures while Father Jollyjelly is delivering toys to all the good-aligned children of the world

it's my birthday gift to taquito boyfriend who's normally stuck as forever DM; our group's brought their A game to the character building & I'm STOKED
posted by taquito sunrise at 7:10 AM on December 26, 2022 [11 favorites]

I have SLAMMED back into "normal life" this year; my decorations (which were sparse, it should be noted) are about two-thirds packed away already, and I am actually looking forward to a full week of cleanup.

Mind you, though, some of this "cleanup" is the kind of self-care organizing-and-planning stuff that makes me feel more grounded anyway; decluttering spaces, finally tackling little niggling stuff around the house, and (most importantly) a deep dive into my pantry and freezer to figure out "how can I use all this". I'm going to try to clean the surfactant leaching spots that cropped up on the bathroom ceiling, give the windows a good clean (the storm made them dirrrrty, and when it warms up I can give the outsides a good wash), and do a really strict curation of my cookbook collection and appliance collection (there's a couple cookbooks I picked up free from the sidewalk that I'm not using, and there's a "small" stand mixer I got that doesn't really suit me after all).

Full disclosure that the cookbook curation is so I can make room for some new cookbooks I expressly asked for; ones with more of a focus on from-the-pantry cooking and savory baking. I'm hoping I can be more flexible about using up what I've got more regularly, and more flexible about baking in general. I got myself an early Christmas present; a copy of a book about simple French baking, which I fell in love with because so many of its recipes had scores of variations, and I'm hoping that could nudge me toward more culinary creativity. I tend to follow recipes in lockstep still, and hunt down a recipe for "cinnamon pound cake" or "orange pound cake" rather than simply knowing how to turn a boilerplate pound cake into an orange one; this cookbook has all those variants on their one pound cake recipe, so I could eventually get to the point where I can just play with what's on hand. I already played around with one of their recipes for a simple mini chocolate cake and made these chocolate-orange-cinnamon things that turned out beautifully.

But the real fun is likely going to come from savory baking; that cookbook I got also has a bunch of savory muffin and scone ideas, and the author flat-out says she was inspired by omelet fillings in devising them. And I'm already thinking how I could turn this into an approach to use up leftover scraps around the house by just bunging them into a savory quick bread and eating them up that way. And I have some intense meals planned for the coming weekend as well, and there's an idea about throwing leftover stews into a pie crust and using them up that way.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:18 AM on December 26, 2022 [6 favorites]

My daughter got me a copy of Paper Automata by Rob Ives and I had anjoyable evening making a flying fish [imgur] .
posted by td2x10e3 at 7:51 AM on December 26, 2022 [11 favorites]

I'm trying a slightly different visualising technique to deal with rumination and anxiety.

I visualise my anxious self as a small, grumpy, warty dragon that I wear draped over my shoulders. It likes to mutter its thoughts and opinions into my ear.

It thinks its keeping me safe but its not very wise.

If I don’t look after it properly it starts exuding corrosive fluids, and gets heavier, so that carrying it becomes a real burden, and it startles at the slightest thing, digging its claws into me, and wrapping its tail around my throat.

It loves to play with water. If I can get it in the sea, it changes into a blissed-out swirling creature.

It also loves stories, and playing with dogs, and knitting, and listening to the rain.
posted by Zumbador at 7:51 AM on December 26, 2022 [29 favorites]

This holiday season, I have discovered that I likely have lactose intolerance (hurray, maybe my long term gastrointestinal distress will stop!) but also that all of my meds contain lactose. I guess my doctor can likely sort that out (I hope?) but for now, store bought lactase is my new best friend.
posted by Dysk at 8:34 AM on December 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

Really torn: I am at urgent care with my son, but my wife is deep cleaning the house. Serious "frying pan or fire" quandary here.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:39 AM on December 26, 2022 [7 favorites]

Through a 9th step amend process, I am getting in touch with a couple of old friends where there hasn't been any contact for decades.

Whether or not the reconnection lasts is almost beside the point: I just feel weird about how things ended with both of them.

The one coming up this week is with my college roomie, and I'm honestly psyched. There will be a few more, I think, God willing. My prayer is that the reconnection prove beneficial to both parties, not just me.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 8:44 AM on December 26, 2022 [11 favorites]

Santa brought me benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, which apparently mean when I lean or turn a certain way my inner ear says "AAAH WE'RE ON A TILT A WHIRL" for a few seconds while the stationary world spins around me. I did some exercises to try and reset it, which appears to mostly have worked, after getting through the "it's much worse now and I am death-grip holding onto the couch so I don't fly off and oh no I might throw up" portion. 'Benign' my ass.

Apparently this is something that just happens, and once it starts it never really goes away, so I guess I got that to look forward to.
posted by AzraelBrown at 8:54 AM on December 26, 2022 [10 favorites]

Yesterday was holiday dinner with my in-laws, who are going through a rough year as my elderly MiL fell a couple of months ago and it exposed the decline she'd been going through since the start of the pandemic. The family thought she might pass last month but she seems to be stable and has been evaluated for hospice care, not because the medical experts think she's about to go but as an acknowledgement she's not getting any better. The other option is memory care.

This has been a rough year because it's the fifth anniversary of my mother going into hospice care and today is the 35th anniversary of my dad's burial. MiL's situation has brought up a lot of feelings and stress that I thought was in the past. With my mother, since I am an only child, it was both very difficult and very easy: if a thing needed doing, I did it or arranged to get it done. Nobody was questioning my decisions and I didn't have to inform anybody. Things are handled differently because FiL has three kids (two local in Dallas, including Mr Epigrams, and one in NOLA).

In-laws have traditionally done the full Christmas press, which has diminished over the years and for this first year without MiL driving it, turned into a lovely potluck brunch. It's about the right speed for me and for all that it was sad because MiL couldn't be with us and Team NOLA didn't join, it was nice to have a quiet and less performative holiday when we were really grateful for the company.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 9:11 AM on December 26, 2022 [7 favorites]

I wrote down those recipes onto cards, except for rice and peas, because I want to try a better one next time, one specifically for a rice cooker. It'll be nice to have a recipe box without the clutter of folded, stained printouts.

I wasn't able to play any Pokemon Violet before heading up to New England for Christmas. Will be pursuing Gym Badge #3 once we get back.

My older sister-in-law both got her doctorate (in a humanities-related field) and engaged shortly before the holiday. Her fiancé is a nice, goofy guy who we've known for awhile. They're hoping to get hitched this coming summer. Oh, and they also recently got an adorable toy poodle puppy, who has been spending the weekend meeting the other dogs in my husband's family. Exciting times ahead!

This has been my first Christmas up here since my mother-in-law passed away. The tone is definitely different, but not as moody as I had expected, which is good. Life goes on.

Thank you all for another lovely year in this blue-teal corner of the internet.
posted by May Kasahara at 9:16 AM on December 26, 2022 [6 favorites]

Hi everyone! I'm doing a writing thing and a cleaning thing in January and I'd love your company so I've posted them both over on IRL.

Apartment Therapy January Cure 2023, where they send you a new daily cleaning or home care task every weekday for 20 days and you do as many of them as you like (starts Jan 2)

Jami Attenberg's Mini 1000, where you write 1000 words a day for six days (starts Jan 7)

Come join! We have a nice time.
posted by mochapickle at 9:41 AM on December 26, 2022 [9 favorites]

Several of my American friends have variations on the idea of moving to an old house in England.

By coincidence, one has gone up for sale here in the city of Worcester (about a mile west of where they make Worcestershire Sauce). Three bedrooms. Needs a lot of work; there's reasons why they haven't pictured the kitchen, and it's (preservation) listed so you can't change some of the features (though you can probably rip up the purple carpet). Yes, that really is a bathroom. Around $360,000 in US money.

The house is 700 years old so it's probably haunted.
posted by Wordshore at 9:56 AM on December 26, 2022 [13 favorites]

I wonder how people are dealing with the extreme weather in the US. I feel there are some MeFites I haven't seen here for a while, but it might as well be because I have been too busy to really read the posts and the comments.

For me, the holidays end tomorrow, when the last family members go home, and I start cleaning up and working on two articles and preparing January's classes and next semester... you get the grist. But it has been wonderful. After the dreadful corona holidays, it has been a joy to be together, and to relax and play and cook and eat.

My eldest grandson is three, and everyone worked to make this a magical holiday for him. During the day (all six hours of it), the adult kids went out with him to find a Christmas tree in the forest, and brought it in and decorated it with him. He also decorated all of the rest of the house in three-year old height, so I know the next few days I'll be finding elves and baubles everywhere under one meter, and weirdly: candles. We tried to explain what candles were for, but he would have nothing of it, and stuck them in the weirdest places as decorations in their own right.

Any big feast takes some planning and coordination, but having it ready for kids at 5:30 is something I haven't done for ages. Everyone did their part, and we were only 15 minutes late, mainly because the lox turned out to be raw salmon and we had to improvise a first course. (My eldest asked why we even needed a first course, with the goose and all the sides as the main, but the point is that the goose needs to rest and the gravy needs to reduce, and it works better when all are at the table, nibbling something, as that happens).

During dinner, Santa arrived. In our family, the tradition is not to have anyone dress up, but that the oldest male person meets him in the hallway (behind closed doors) and has a very loud discussion with Santa, doing voices. I had to instruct my ex how to do it, since we haven't done it since mine and my cousin's kids were small, and my cousin took it on him, but ex did it perfectly!
And everyone agreed it is much more magical than a dressed up uncle.

The tradition is that during dinner, the head cook-person asks wether anyone needs more gravy. As my eldest replied (she didn't know we were doing this): that is a stupid question. But that person sneaks out, and knocks on the front door, and then the male person goes out to "open" the door. Cook-person returns with the gravy, and then Santa and oldest male start a conversation about the bygone year, and everyone's merits (in a loving way). As every mefite who does theatre knows, it works even with adults who know what is going on. With little guy, it was almost too much, but also amazing. Then Santa blesses the gifts and the tree, and we can move on to our dessert: rice pudding, and then the presents.

My side of the family is (secular) Jewish, so the rice pudding is a new thing, introduced by my SIL, though she is also Jewish. Before, we had mousse au chocolate, which I much prefer, not least because it can be made the day before. But I was overruled.
posted by mumimor at 9:58 AM on December 26, 2022 [8 favorites]

We got together with family and ended up discussing our family photos from staying at Grand Lake near Rocky Mountain National Park last summer, the side that is still recovering from the East Troublesome Fire, and even with abundant evidence of the fire, it remains a magical place. We couldn’t find a place for a reasonable price that would include a dog at Estes Park, and that turned out to be a blessing. It was quieter. The park events on the cycle of post-fire regeneration were hopeful, and the megafauna were just as happy as we were to just “be” and hang out. We stayed in our lane (the established trails). It was lovely to revisit and hear what memories were made. We are still sorting photos and have re-branded “photographer’s pace” for those who were more about seeing the sights than covering the most (pant, pant) distance at higher elevations.

We’re home for the week and that added a little extra love to the cocoon experience. We baked homemade cinnamon rolls with the youngest teen (and have made note of EC’s Savory Baking cookbook) My BIL cooked, so we brought an appetizer. The ham from the grocery store will get roasted for dinner and be sandwiches or picked at for the rest of the week, with the bone eventually becoming part of our bean soup. After it warms later this week, we will hit up the National Zoo. My DMD teen godson is in the hospital after RSV pneumonia and is heading for a tracheostomy so we’re hoping to get some nice digital photos or post cards of their red pandas, his very favorite animal. Masking continues to matter.
posted by childofTethys at 10:49 AM on December 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

store bought lactase is my new best friend

I'm a huge fan of cow's milk. I get liquid lactose from Amazon and pre-treat each quart of milk. Way better than chewing chalky tablets.
posted by neuron at 11:12 AM on December 26, 2022

We learned how sick a dog can get after she ate a large portion of pumpkin rum cake

The other day a relative made fudge. She took it out of the oven and then went into another room. The dog immediately ate the entire half pound of fudge. Treatment at the emergency vet included an antiemetic, beta blockers (to reduce heart rate), and an overnight stay for observation. ... The toxic agent in chocolate is theobromine, an alkaloid similar to caffeine and theophylline. Dogs cannot metabolize theobromine so it lingers.
posted by neuron at 11:19 AM on December 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

AzraelBrown, good news: benign paroxysmal positional vertigo can go away for years. I started having it when I was still in the US. I moved to Sweden roughly 5 years ago and had a really bad case for a couple of months. I did all the exercises and, eventually, it went away. It may come back but I have had 4.5 years without it, which is grand. So do not despair.

Wordshore, practically the only part of that historical building that I would want to keep is the purple carpet. That place is a mess and I bet there are no straight angles in any part of the building. The location seems nice, at least.

In Sweden, most folks who celebrate Christmas celebrate it on Christmas Eve, so yesterday was a vacation day for me. No family over. It was great. I was supposed to have the grandkids and ex-son-in-law over for dinner Saturday night, but the parental switch happened late and then the toddler was cranky. So I asked the dad if it would be easier if I just brought over the food and left it there. It was, so I did, and it was great to just sort of be. The dad sent me a sweet text raving about the food. It was not fancy but he usually does all the cooking. So mashed potatoes, dressing, mushroom gravy, a bunch of Quorn, and some lingonberries (no cranberries at hand) worked magic on him. It was satisfying that he enjoyed it so much.

Yesterday all three kids came over and we made chocolate balls, which is butter, sugar, lots of oatmeal, and a bit of cocoa and vanilla mixed together and then rolled in pearl sugar or sprinkles. By the end, the toddler was covered in sprinkles, which he had been eating out of a bowl with a spoon (that I did not give him). When I said the toddler shouldn't have so much sugar, the eldest said, "But grandma, today is a special day."

It was a special day. I am still finding sprinkles everywhere but I'm rolling with it. As mumimor notes, our days are still six hours only. But I can feel that we are being pulled toward the light again. My mood has shifted, and I am grateful for the shift. Hugs to everyone one who wants 'em.
posted by Bella Donna at 11:21 AM on December 26, 2022 [11 favorites]

Kid is 13 but still so excited about Christmas that he was up at 2:30 AM waiting for my wife and I to wake up. She got up to use the bathroom at 5:30 and he came thundering up the stairs thinking it was present time. So, what the heck. Everything unwrapped by 7 AM even at our traditional slow one-gift-at-a-time, one-person-at-a-time pace. He was out cold by 7 PM and didn’t wake up until nearly 9 this morning. Every time we think he’ll finally outgrow his child-like excitement over the holidays, he surprises us by continuing to be just as into it as he was when he was 5. We love it and are not in any hurry for him to grow up. 😊
posted by caution live frogs at 11:22 AM on December 26, 2022 [12 favorites]

benign paroxysmal positional vertigo ... once it starts it never really goes away

It usually goes away but you gotta really do those exercises in earnest.
posted by neuron at 11:22 AM on December 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

We had a pretty good Christmas. My wife's mother came over on Eve and Day and my wife made big dinners. We're blessed that my MiL's Alzheimer's has barely progressed this year. She has a vision problem from a stroke such that she doesn't see the left half of whatever she looks at. After she "finished" her supper I rotated her plate 180 degrees so she could eat her vegetables. We went for a drive to look at lights one evening and not only could she not see things on the left side of the street, she wouldn't even turn her head to the left as she was unaware that the left side of the universe exists.

My son-in-law and I gave each other the same gift: Cormac McCarthy's new novels. I gave him and my daughter Scrabble and my daughter said "You're trying to ruin our marriage."
posted by neuron at 11:40 AM on December 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Our nonreligious family celebrates 'xmas' which is the capitalist holiday of buying small children too many gifts. We tie a $20 to the top of the tree to remind us what the holiday is all about. Back when we lived somewhere where they came around to collect trees we'd leave it on for a homeless person or the garbage collectors to find
posted by mbo at 12:03 PM on December 26, 2022 [5 favorites]

Zumbador, you described that dragon so perfectly. I have it too. My brother and SIL, knowing that I love those large oversize mugs got me a bright orange one that says Ignore Negativity. I think that maybe should be my theme for the new year. The only thing is that for it to really work you have to fill it with positivity.
posted by blue shadows at 12:11 PM on December 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

I hosted xmas and the family has all gone home. They left early enough that I had not changed out of pajamas, so I can lounge in comfort the rest of the day. I'm nibbling at productive things: some post-holiday cleanup, starting a year-planning exercise, sharpening my set of colored pencils (and re-installing my pencil sharpener on the wall when it came loose in the process). Breaking down a large stack of cardboard boxes that were intended for the garden last spring. Also making notes on what did and didn't work for hosting, since I'm likely to do it again. Nice slow day.
posted by mersen at 12:21 PM on December 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

AzraelBrown I had the same thing happen to me 15 years ago.

I suffered for nearly a week before finding the Epley Maneuver, which cleared things up with each repetition. Haven't had a relapse since, but I'm always prepared. I'm glad you're better now.
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:25 PM on December 26, 2022 [5 favorites]

AzraelBrown, I had a serious bout of vertigo nearly a decade ago. It was treated with betahistine, which my doctor warned me "might affect [my] sleep cycle."

He was not wrong; while it reduced the vertigo to almost nothing, I briefly slept a lot more. Day one: nineteen hours of sleep. Struggled out of bed at 5:00 PM, yawning and stretching by 10:00 PM. Day two was between seventeen and eighteen hours.

It settled down after a few days, but good lord, was I ever (a) unproductive and (b) well-rested.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:49 PM on December 26, 2022 [5 favorites]

I missed a trip to visit family, visit several friends, and adopt a cat because of the US blizzard. I also managed to give myself large blisters on all the fingers of one hand either through frostbite or by slipping on ice and stupidly breaking my fall in a way I should know better than to do while trying to get home from the airport. (I'll be fine. There's no real damage and all the fingers work. It's just ugly and slightly annoying.)

It looks like the weather will allow me to join a friend at their parents' place in a few days and then take a 3000km road trip together, which I'm really looking forward to. We'll see if I can get home again from the US east coast after that trip. Finger's crossed. But, there's nothing I really need to be physically present for that week and I assume I'll get home eventually. Then scheduling make-up visits and cat transport. It's been a complicated. . . well, year, actually.
posted by eotvos at 2:14 PM on December 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

Down in Florida for family Christmas. It's been in the 40's some days, but much better than home in Vermont. It was in single digits and the power was out for a day or two.
Found out today that neither the cat nor the pipes froze, so now I can relax.
posted by MtDewd at 3:02 PM on December 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

To be fully honest, I think that "unproductive and well-rested" is sort of the bliss state of most humans. Most cannot be unproductive because even just being alive requires maintenance, and artists and the inspired are driven in different ways. But generally, I think any sociologist would look at the activities of humans and go "yeah, lazy and resting is their favorite thing".

I agree in principle, but I haven't had a nine-to-five job in years, so perhaps I am using the term in a misleading fashion. I wasn't really thinking about getting the quarterly reports out. "Unproductive," in this instance, also meant I had no time to read books or watch streaming services. I suppose we could count all this extra unconsciousness as binge-napping, but I do like a bit more variety in my day than this.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:07 PM on December 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

I noticed that we had a lot of COVID tests under the sink, so I took one just for fun... It was positive (I thought I just had a cold!) It's been corroborated with another test. Merry Christmas to me?
posted by Pitachu at 4:22 PM on December 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

EmpressCallipygos that French baking cook book sounds like a winner. Care to share the title?
posted by sardonyx at 4:33 PM on December 26, 2022

Thank you all for the support and suggestions with my spinny head thing! The exercises I did were the Epley Maneuver steps, which eventually did improve things (today I only felt a little wobbly when reaching to pick my shoes off the floor), but I did it over the span of a couple hours because at first I had to stop in the middle because the pillow-under-shoulders, head-lower-than-body position set the vertigo to 11 and I had to sit up and let it pass.
posted by AzraelBrown at 4:37 PM on December 26, 2022 [5 favorites]

JoeZydeco: thank you for that video, it helped me better position myself and after doing it three times his way, the dizziness at the 'you may be dizzy here' points went away - I had been sitting up too soon.
posted by AzraelBrown at 5:06 PM on December 26, 2022 [5 favorites]

I am separate from the family again. My mom would not stop critiquing my driving every 30 seconds to 2 minutes every single time we were in the car. GOD I CAN'T WAIT UNTIL SHE CAN DRIVE AGAIN. So we inevitably fought, as usual, but at least ended on a relatively good note and didn't fight on Christmas Day.

You ever do something, regret that you did it, and then when it comes out, hope to god it doesn't bite you in the ass? Without specifying, that's secretly happened to me today and I'm glad I'm not at work this week because if anyone harasses me over this, it will probably happen there. So far, all quiet on the western front, though, and this dropping on Dead Week helps. Hopefully.

Tonight starts tech week, God help me, along with another week of Storm Of The Century weather.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:15 PM on December 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

Heading for the silence of January second...
posted by Oyéah at 7:22 PM on December 26, 2022

I entered my fourth year of anosmia. So there's that.
posted by DJZouke at 4:56 AM on December 27, 2022

Heh. I’ve been asnomic my entire life.

I’ve gotta say: if you’re going to go through life missing one of your canonical five senses, this is the one.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:59 AM on December 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

However, it does sometimes cause typos.)
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:03 AM on December 27, 2022 [3 favorites]

Work isn't great right now because it's really cold in our little corner of the continually-crumbling century-old building that our library is in. I've got two layers on over my shirt and a gallant little space heater going and am still not super comfortable. But the holiday was fine; there wasn't a ton of traffic on the 24th so I could drive up to Chicago without a lot of problems, the interstates were clear, and Chicago was great--pretty cold on the 25th but I still got out for a nice walk, and better the next day. (I think that I may be starting to get of an age where I'm not terribly fond of the cold--hello, old age--but I still have the thing going where, once I accept the cold, even a minor increase in the temperature just feels great.) Stumbled across Viet Town and had a bánh mì, some Vietnamese coffee, and various yummies from a bakery.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:18 AM on December 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

Checked today on my very expensive "specialty pharmacy" prescription and there was, as I feared, a screwup with the order, so I'm going to be a week late getting it on an every-other-week prescription. I'm mad at the pharmacy for screwing up my prescription but I'm also super annoyed at myself for not following up last week when I could have done something about it--but also last week I didn't know anything was wrong plus it was super busy with the runup to the holiday weekend.

BUT I am going to get the drug even if it's late, so there's that.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 10:01 AM on December 27, 2022

Well. It's very blustery here in my little corner of the world, and the big news is that one of the five large pine trees lining one side of my apartment complex's parking lot has fallen. Landlord has emailed everyone to "not linger" in the parking lot until they can clean it up and cut down the rest of them. Understandably I haven't wandered over to take a closer look, but it appears that by some miracle the tree fell between two cars, so if there's any damage it's probably minor. So far, anyway - the forecast is for the wind gusts to continue into the evening, and it's only 10am at the moment....

I can't say I'm surprised; I've been saying since I moved in here seven years ago that they look very unhealthy (scraggly, broken branches, many brown needles all the time). Which is why I have been diligently parking at the other end of the lot where they aren't.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:29 AM on December 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

I have cleaned out and sorted and categorized my entire cupboard-based pantry. And Thursday the doctors' appointment I'd had has been cancelled, so that gives me all day Thursday to do the fridge and freezer.

I have a couple of decadent things planned this coming weekend and next weekend that I'll need to shop for, but after that it's very possible I won't need to go to the grocery store for like two weeks.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:30 PM on December 27, 2022

I’ve gotta say: if you’re going to go through life missing one of your canonical five senses, this is the one.
Actually it's two senses: smell and taste. I am sorry to hear that you have never smelled or tasted anything. I don't know which is more difficult to adapt to. I lost mine for two years due to depression and they returned in 2015. Then an ear infection wiped them out in December 2019. Not very much fun when you loved to cook, eat and drink a bit of vino.
posted by DJZouke at 12:59 PM on December 27, 2022

I just saw Mercury for the first time, that I know of.
(And I’m 70)
posted by MtDewd at 3:33 PM on December 27, 2022 [4 favorites]

Son in law and grandchild got sick so I didn’t have Christmas Day at all this first year since my husband died. Christmas triggers acute bad feelings for me anyway, especially after the year my damn mother decided to die on Christmas. So I had a fairly terrible day. But I took down the tree at the end of the day and woke up the next morning in a much better mood. Then the heated cat bed arrived for my elderly mostly-broken cat and now she has somewhere besides my lap to spend her days, and I’m free to get up occasionally.

I go through some version of this absolutely terrible mood every year, and a few years back I knitted myself a Santa cap to remind myself of how much I hate the holidays.
posted by Peach at 6:09 PM on December 27, 2022 [3 favorites]

the ducks don't like snowstorms
posted by pyramid termite at 7:57 PM on December 27, 2022 [4 favorites]

EmpressCallipygos that French baking cook book sounds like a winner. Care to share the title?

Sorry, I missed your question until today! It's called Gateau, and it is fantastic. It starts out with a note about how this isn't the super-fancy pastries everyone usually thinks French baking is about - French people eat those things, yeah, but they don't make them themselves, because if you have the bakery down the street that does them better, why bother? So instead, this is about the simple home-made home baking things that a French amateur baker would actually do.

And what I love about it is that the author will frequently list a basic recipe and then add a toooooooon of variations; like, her pound cake recipe has fifty-two of them. And sometimes she will offer a variation on the basic recipe as a separate recipe, and then add some variations to that (there's a little mini-cake thing called a financier, something usually made with almond flour and butter; she has a few variations on the original financier recipe, but then two pages later offers an overall recipe for a chocolate financier, and then lists some variations in case you want to make it a chocolate-orange one, or a chocolate-cherry one, or....)

I actually had this on my Amazon wishlist back in September, expecting that I would hint about it as we got close to Christmas, but then I saw a copy in a bookstore and flipped through it finally - and realized "I can't risk NOT getting this" and just bought it for myself.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:11 AM on December 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

I suppose that if you never knew smells or tastes, you don't miss them. There might even be some benefits. But I lost them because of COVID for several months and it was depressing. Food is a huge part of my identity, and not enjoying it was so sad. Luckily, both senses have returned with a vengeance. I don't know if they are actually better now than before COVID, or if I am just more aware.

Everyone else has left the farm, and I am alone with the dog. It's very, very quiet. I like it, though I liked the festivities too. I'm very tired, because we stayed up late talking and drinking too much every night, but I'm trying to get to a relatively normal bedtime. Yesterday I went to bed at six, and that just meant I woke up at four and couldn't sleep.
posted by mumimor at 9:53 AM on December 28, 2022 [4 favorites]

As I have mentioned before, I am mildly dismayed at how media outlets have pretty much abandoned captioning photos. If the story is that the mayor got his head stuck in a bannister again and the photo is a headshot of the mayor, sure: we can work out why it is there.

In general, we often get a photo of someone whose identity may not be clear from the attached story. Police seek someone for questioning in an assault; they have already arrested an accused accomplice and here is a witness to the assault, interviewed in the story. The photo of an unidentified guy: fugitive? Arrestee? Victim? Witness? Who’s to say?

In Canada, we ceased production of the one-cent coin a decade ago. A CBC story today speculated on how much longer the nickel (the five-cent coin) will be around.

The CBC is one of the few media outlets that still puts captions on photos. This of course does not mean the photos are necessarily relevant. A CBC story today covers the potent end of the nickel and, cryptically, includes a photo of King Charles III at a formal dinner speaking to a dining companion. The caption:

King Charles III is seen in profile, as he may appear on a coin, as he speaks with South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa in November. Will a Canadian nickel bear his image?

Okay then.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:54 AM on December 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

*potential
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:20 AM on December 28, 2022

Unusually for me, I did a fair amount of visiting and eating over the Christmas weekend (I've generally spent the holidays alone for most of the past decade; not necessarily by choice, but not not by choice either). But as much as I enjoyed the fantastic camaraderie and amazing food this year, I think I'll prefer quietly ringing in the new year solo. I'll buy myself a really nice bottle of scotch - both because it's such a treat and because dropping some dough on it will oblige me to make it last, leading to a pleasant but non-over-indulgent New Year's Eve - and watch a movie or two. Slàinte mhath!
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:42 PM on December 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Welp , I've been exposed again, by someone who thought he had a sinus infection. He was sniffly yesterday, I had my KN95 on the entire time I was around him, but we were up close and personal for like a half hour while I was learning the lights for the show. He thinks he got it from Dec. 24 dinner since other people at it got it.

I tested negative today, but I was at my most Covid-cautious friend's house when I got the text saying to test immediately--she waited nearly 3 years to have anyone over--and I had to be the asshole who exposed her. I didn't take off my mask the entire time and we hadn't gotten to eating yet, thank goodness, but I feel like such a shit potentially bringing it into her home where she was safe.

I ran out and covid doomsday prepped shopped so I won't have to leave the house for weeks (assuming I'd even be able to) and I'm as doomsday prepped as you can get at this point. Now, to wait.

Asked about the gala getting canceled and he said canceling would literally put them out of business and they'd have to refund $15k. JESUS.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:02 PM on December 28, 2022 [3 favorites]

As part of my week off I booked a massage at a spa in the city.

....This is the only time I have made a mental note of that massage therapist - because DANG. I didn't feel like I'd just gotten a massage - I felt like I'd been IRONED.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:08 PM on December 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Snorkelled at a beach I've not been to before. So many fish! And apparently there's an octopus but I didn't see it.
posted by Zumbador at 4:14 AM on December 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

I felt like I'd been IRONED.

I think if you showed up at work with neat creases, people would have questions.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:53 AM on December 29, 2022

ever hear of a monkey orchid?
posted by pyramid termite at 4:37 PM on December 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

I didn't see a single soul from Thursday night to Tuesday morning. It'll be a year tomorrow since my dad died from Covid. I'm back to doing a lot of self blaming (I lived with him and helped him out with stuff. He's was two weeks from his 82nd birthday).

I was planning on going to church Christmas Eve and day to sing with the choir, but between the cold and feeling sorry for myself, I decided I just wanted to be alone.

Thankfully I'm off through Monday. I won't be being a hermit though. I have a 5K on Saturday and church on Sunday.
posted by kathrynm at 5:37 PM on December 29, 2022 [4 favorites]

I had a pretty unpleasant day today, cleaning up sewage that had backed up into the bathroom in my vacant downstairs apartment and the city sewer guys still haven't found the source of the problem so it's not safe to use the plumbing for at least another day.

Thank goodness I could buy a day pass for the local rec center and clean myself up after an afternoon spent handling.. you know, I'll just spare you all the details.

I rarely order out for pizza but newly clean and smelling less overwhelmingly of bleach, and with the plumbing off limits for the time being, I treated myself to something that won't require a working kitchen sink. And I am realizing that I'm particularly grateful tonight to be clean and dry and have hot food that is all the tastier for being served with a bit of extra perspective.

(And for dessert, I'm going to absolutely pig out on schadenfreude after reading reports that Andrew Tate's Twitter beef with Greta Thunberg tipped Romanian authorities off as to his location and he has been detained on a number of charges, including human trafficking.)
posted by Nerd of the North at 5:42 PM on December 29, 2022 [4 favorites]

Today's theater update: nobody else has tested positive for covid beyond the first three, so the show is still on. Except two of the three are performers who still sound at least somewhat sick/test positive, show is Saturday, and today was going to be the day where they figured out who gets to cover the gorilla part. I have no idea what happens if the emcee is still out of commission that night.

I was also curious as how they were going to handle the part where Sally has to carry around a raw egg in her fur coat to make "prairie oysters," but alas, I did not get to see any of this because something in the theater is burning, nobody can figure out what it is, and rehearsal was shut down so nobody has to breathe in mystery smoke (and someone's asthma was already acting up). Hooooooo boy.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:26 PM on December 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

Is this still the open free thread? Hello from Romania. Our five day quarantine ends today so we are looking forward to doing some minor stuff, still masked for course.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:43 AM on December 30, 2022 [6 favorites]

This New Years Eve is developing in an iffy direction.
I'm home alone, as planned, and that is a good thing. After almost a week of intense partying, I'm not sure I have recovered yet. But I'm eating leftovers, and maybe this is turning out to be unwise. Should I not have eaten a lovely gravy based on a chicken stock that has been in the fridge since Christmas Eve? I cooked it in the pressure cooker, hoping that might kill off all the germs, but some survive high heat, or what?
The last chocolate from the big box tasted of mold, so now I won't know if it is the gravy or the chocolate that poisoned me when I become sick.
My intention was actually to make the pheasant with accompanying gravy yesterday, but I was too tired and just had vegetables, and a tiny bit of leftover lox. So now I have the ingredients I had planned to use today in the fridge: will they make me sick tomorrow? They are cod, spinach and mustard sauce. And an egg, I think.
So many questions...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
posted by mumimor at 12:17 PM on December 31, 2022 [3 favorites]

I saw this quote today, in an article about vegetarian sandwiches,
"alfalfa sprouts smell as if a field of grass were having sex.” I have never liked alfalfa sprouts, I think this is the very reason. It is quiet and gonna rain. Happy New Year Metafilter.
posted by Oyéah at 1:34 PM on December 31, 2022 [2 favorites]

"alfalfa sprouts smell as if a field of grass were having sex."

I didn't know I needed that expression until now!
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:39 PM on December 31, 2022

One more New Year's update:
In Denmark, there are some traditions for this evening that most people follow. At 6 PM, the Queen speaks, and people will be dressed up and ready then. The first bottles of champagne pop.

Then people do what they do, with quite a few watching the idiotic Dinner for One.

And then at midnight, everyone tunes in to the Copenhagen Town Hall Bells. If you watch it on TV, you will see the insane riot of fireworks and drunken festivitas going on at the square in front of the town hall. As the first bell strikes, you jump into the new year, either from a chair, or in my case from a pillow. Then the choir of the national radio sings our special New Years hymn and our two national anthems. (Yes, we have two, I don't know why).

This year was special, which is why I was posting. We all know that Russia launched a terror attack on Ukraine today, and killed a person. So the first thing the Queen mentioned was that we as a nation support Ukraine and all the refugees who are here from Ukraine. And here in the middle of the night, the Copenhagen town hall and the square in front of it were embellished with Blue and Gold, in support of Ukraine. I have never seen anything like it, and I hope it reaches Ukraine.

Another special thing was about the choir. It's a long story but they have been through some bad stuff. Their current conductor is immensely popular, though, because he arranged sing-alongs during lock-down, and this year he had also arranged for a special, less formal version of the traditional songs. The choir is more diverse than ever, and in between the two national anthems, they had put in a song welcoming newcomers. Everyone looked very happy, and I hope that was real.

But mostly, for the new year: Slava Ukraini
posted by mumimor at 3:24 PM on December 31, 2022 [4 favorites]

Still testing negative! Weirdly enough, the guy I was exposed to tested negative yesterday(!) and is now wondering if he got a false positive. (If anyone has any info as to how someone figures out a "false" positive, please let me know. I just got told "bright purple" is what happens.) So we have two out of the three missing people back, the third one will be skipped/replaced. Thank gawd the emcee guy is back so I know what the heck I'm doing on the cues he's in. I am also happy to see that he has no resemblance to Pee-Wee Herman like the first emcee I ever saw doing the part (couldn't stand that guy).

I did see how "prairie oysters" went--she had two eggs in napkins and a bottle of sauce and they had to literally drink eggs on stage. The guy said it wasn't that bad, the girl wasn't too thrilled with how it went. The director was all "we'll practice it" and she was all "well, show's tomorrow...."

I am all dressed up for the gala tonight in a dress I can never wear otherwise, and I got my hair done. It's pouring ass rain and it's a very long dress, but hopefully I won't be in it for very long.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:50 PM on December 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

I have just finished reading Katherine Addison's Witness for the Dead .

I want to go right back to the beginning and read it again. Lovely, gentle, sad, compassionate book. Set in the world of The Goblin Emperor.

She has this ability to evoke the place so vividly. The tea houses!
posted by Zumbador at 10:00 PM on December 31, 2022 [2 favorites]

Hah, reading that one right now, actually.

The show and the party were great last night. Now on to two NYD parties during the day....
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:51 AM on January 1, 2023 [4 favorites]