Thoughts on the Journey

This has been an odd but nice holiday season so far. My parents and their friend group has become the health care coordinating team for another couple; the wife had a major stroke the week before Christmas and her husband is dealing with the onset of dementia. For all of us its bringing back hard memories of the Christmas that my sister spent in the hospital. Also I drove down early enough to avoid the worst of the storm last week, just had to deal with a good bit of traffic as I wasn't the only one thinking of moving ahead of the storm.

Thankfully my brother and his family took on the major cooking and hosting. I did some baking; a Greek yogurt cake and a gingerbread buche de Noel, which were fun and big hits.

Another bump was that my first paycheck was mailed to my apartment so I don't get to use that money until I'm home. Apparently it take them one round of set up for the direct deposit to work.

In good things, I'm enjoying having the time to finally read At the Feet of the Sun which is wonderful. Goddard is such a good writer. I'm also enjoying cooking with my new Smitten Kitchen cookbook, so far we've made endive salad and a leek and brie galette.

For Yuletide, I received two wonderful gifts.

The Proving Grounds of Coruscant which feels very like the Andor series with all its choices.

Hero is an amazing short October Daye fic that has all the feels and vibes of why I love that series.

And my fic is going over very well which feels nice. At the moment, I have some challah rising and I'm going to finish writing a fic for another small exchange that I'm in.

This last week ended up really busy for me but I was able to get things done. Last night I stayed up too late reading, F. C. Yee's books are great but not for before bed reading. So I thought I'd write out what I did as a reminder to myself that as time's still weird, I have been making progress.

My car is now running for the first time since I think April. It took two calls to AAA to get it sorted as apparently the last time I had my battery replaced, they put in one that was too small. Now I need to get my oil changed and drive it around a little more before it can have its inspection. Apparently getting the battery replaced zeroes out a lot of data that they need, so while the weather's nice I'm going to look into a day trip.

That allowed me to have tea with my lovely relative who lives in Watertown and her husband and cat. I came home with plants and while there were no hugs and we all did our best to stay apart and wear masks when not eating, it felt good. But it also made me miss the rest of my family so much, this weekend, my parents were throwing an outdoor party for my Dad's birthday and my sister's birthday would have been this past week too. The beginning of September is a complicated time.

I also had a video job interview for what could be a great job. I think maybe the last time I had this positive an interview was maybe for one of my temp jobs, where they told me I had it while I was heading home. For this one, the interviewer kept telling me my answers were good and that the next step is for her supervisor to interview me, so I'm waiting to hear. But I'm hopeful, it was a nice reminder that I have lots of skills.

In other home stuff, I made a delicious pineapple upside down cake though it made me realize I don't actually have a good serving tray for it. I had to upend it onto a cookie sheet as the only trays I had that were big enough were family china or a big piece of family silver. Next time I might make a smaller recipe which I think will work better. Or see if at Goodwill or something, I can find a serving platter that's not as precious as the one I have.

The newest October Daye book came out and I inhaled it, this one was so good. It felt like finishing another chapter in Toby's life and parts of it really made me think of some of the messages of the Chrestomanci books about parents and children. It also has me wanting to go back and do a proper reread of the series to find clues that I missed.

My own writing is going slow but the ideas are there, just need to get them down.

I finally got all my icons back and added a few Star Wars ones but I want to add more. This is one of my favorites because its Cassian being a pilot and hyperspace which is cool and beautiful.

After I finished my college job, I started an over two week long vacation down at my parent's place by the shore. It turned out to be just what I needed after the last academic year.

Important thing that happened was I saw my mother's dentist twice, once for x-rays and for him to go, yes, you need a root canal and then the actual root canal. So now my tooth doesn't hurt and I'm not thinking constantly about my mouth. The dentist was really nice, his office was part of a very fancy dental complex and so while the whole process was long, it went fairly well.

For the Fourth of July, I made blueberry boy bait from a Smitten Kitchen recipe that was delicious but far too large a recipe for the small group that came to celebrate. If you ever want an easy recipe that makes a simple and very blueberry cake, I recommend this one. Later I also made a delicious blueberry and peach crumble when my brother and his wife stopped by for a quick visit. I was able to have soft shell crabs twice which are honestly one of my favorite parts of summer down by the Delaware shore.

We also had a fun and unexpectedly good visit out to the Air Mobility Command Museum that's right outside Dover. I've always had a love for aviation and my current interest in Star Wars has only added to it. This museum was really wonderfully done with the focus on all the planes and with really good and active volunteer docents. The museum was half inside and half outside and the day we went was really bright and sunny so going from the hangar to outside was intense.

Other than that, I spent a lot of time reading, a few walks though it was really hot and humid and planning what's next. I also had a phone interview with a school that went okay, it helped me think about recrafting my resume and things like that.

One wonderful thing that happened was the dwarf sunflower kit that I bought before my sister's memorial has finally bloomed. The plant's going to live down in my parent's garden where it can get more sun.

And I watched Good Omens, which was beautifully done but didn't completely work for me. The casting and the look of it was great but a lot of the choices made it more Gaiman's story not Pratchett's; too much focus on angels and demons, much less on the actual humans. Aziraphale and Crowley were amazing but I find it really telling how most of the fandom stuff I see about them isn't actually connected to the actual plot of the Apocalypse.