Whither be thee Winter?

Apart from the timely snow on Christmas Eve, which was gone a few days later....here we are still green in late January. It's snowing lightly as we speak, but may be gone again by tomorrow. 

Still in full COVID lockdown, we rarely leave the property - monthly grocery runs, of course, and more recently a quick trip to the village to refill some prescriptions.

Otherwise we are in hunker mode, which involves working from home, puzzles, mulled wine, football playoffs and lots of streaming - most notably of late including Supernatural Season 15, Cobra Kai Season 3, and new Netflix shows Fate, and Cursed. The studio store is closed, other than curbside pickups of custom orders....though we would have likely closed shop anyway for the winter months.

We ordered beer from Bayside Brewing for porch delivery, including a six-pack of their newest beer (Tilt'n Kilt'n IPA) to try it out - not only did the owner himself deliver our order, but he brought us a full case of the new stuff!

We watched with horror as insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, and of course we also watched the subsequent inauguration of President Joe Biden, and the meek departure of his predecessor ("45"), deprived of his Twitter MAGA-phone and facing a second impeachment trial for sedition.

Let us in!

Baker's Rack for the pantry

Stocking Up for Lockdown!

Iceland Puzzle

January 14th

Homemade Chicago-Style Pizza

Venice Puzzle

Hello 2021!

Our White Christmas quickly gave way to a Green New Year's Eve, not atypical in these parts. Our usual New Year's traditions continued, with two days of appetizers, pots of hot mulled wine, and a movie marathon. 

This year, we opted to binge the two existing seasons of The Mandalorian as our Disney+ blitz continued, not accidentally on the heels of the Star Wars marathon we undertook over Christmas.

I immediately started work on several pilot scripts, including: The ManDelorean, a show about a teenaged bounty hunter hired by Dave Grohl to go back in time to 1955 and retrieve rock and roll; The Howie Mandelorian, a cautionary tale of a bald bounty hunter who only accepts payment in briefcases of unknown quantity; and The Mandolinian, the story of a bardic bounty hunter hired by the Archbishop of Dublin to save St. Patrick's Day.

We completed a few small projects, like assembling a kitchen cart we had ordered a little while back. We also finally got around to hanging the boards we had purchased to display our various travel magnets from around the world.

We made some time for puzzles, completing two 1000-piece monsters depicting Lake Como, Italy, and a lush waterfall in Iceland. Lake Como in particular was a challenge, as its initial conclusion resulted in a 999-piece puzzle.....not entirely surprising in a house with eight feline helpers.

We bid a brisk farewell to the dumpster fire that was 2020, and hope for much better things in 2021 as vaccines roll out. It's a long tunnel yet, but there is daylight at the far end. We are both lucky and thankful for all that we have.

Sitting for a Silhouette in Snow

New Year's Eve

Mandalorian Marathon!

Lake Como Puzzle Time

As Gord Downie says....we don't go anywhere, just on trips

(North America on the left; everywhere else on the right)

Christmas Turkey leftovers!