Merry Christmas!
The song of the day is 2022's Kid On Christmas from the 2022 album Holidays Around the World by a cappella group Pentatonix (Kirstin Maldonado, Scott Hoying, Mitch Grassi, Kevin Olusola and Matt Sallee). The song also features Meghan Trainor. The album includes three originals: "Kid on Christmas," a collaboration with Meghan Trainor, "Star on Top" and "Prayers for this World."
Kid on Christmas (below)
Star On Top (below)
Friday turned out to be a sunny, cold day. At 5PM the temperature had fallen to 23°F (-5°C). The low temperature forecast for Friday night is 8°F. I'm gonna be burning dinosaurs and kilowatt-hours, and a fire-log or two.
Nuria warned me that the fruit on the rum cake was soaked in rum. She doesn't want me to get hooked on rum cake alcohol. I used to drink a liter (about a quart) of vodka every day. I did that for years. I chose to quit drinking alcohol. I don't think eating a tiny piece of fruit soaked in rum is going to turn me into an alcoholic. There is probably no alcohol in rum cake anyway—just the flavor of the rum. What concerns me more than the alcohol content is the calorie content. There's a diet in my future, and it's getting closer every day.
I just lit a fire log. There's Christmas jazz music playing in the room. Nuria is sitting on the sofa behind me, phone in hand. She's sending a message to her sister in Costa Rica.
Time passed. The fire burned. The temperature outside continued to fall. It's 16°F now.
Nuria and I watched It Happened One Christmas starring Marlo Thomas, a 1977 remake of the 1946 film It's A Wonderful Life starring James Stewart. We ate more of Nuria's pumpkin pie, which is delicious. In two more hours, Christmas Eve will arrive with the midnight hour. I have nothing exciting to relay to my readers. We're homebodies now, Nuria and I, until Christmas is behind us. There's too much traffic and too many last minute shoppers for us to be driving around. We've already lost one car this Christmas season. Auto-wise, we're now down to my '95 Jeep. But it's a reliable workhorse. Nuria has begun looking at used car ads. Before, long, we'll be a two-car household again, I think, and hope.
"¡Feliz Navidad!" as José Feliciano would say.The expected cold front hit this morning, or at least the leading edge hit. A strong rain shower began falling. After a short while it stopped. Nuria had papers to mail to her lawyers in Chicago, and she wanted them to get there as soon as possible, so she just left the house on a trek to the Post Office. She likes to walk there and the rain isn't falling now. I hope she gets back before the weather gets bad. It's only about 8 minutes to the Post Office and, of course, 8 minutes back. She may spend 5 minutes inside the Post Office, doing business there. So, unless she decides to extend her walk, she should be back about 20 minutes after she left.
Tomorrow we'll walk up the street and visit my buddy Butch. I'd do it today but I fear we might be caught in a downpour.
Nuria is in the kitchen making rum cakes. She said she will make three cakes. She wants to give a couple of them to friends and, of course, there will be one for us. Her last home-baked cake was a red velvet cake with cream cheese icing, and needless to say, it was very good. When the new year gets here, I have to lay off these tasty treats. I've already gained five pounds just in the last few weeks. If I keep gaining weight, I won't be able to get out of bed. Then, I'll have to give up snacks, unless Nuria keeps bringing them to me. There is a YT video about a man who fasted for more than a year and lost 382 pounds. He fasted under medical supervision, but fasting that long is dangerous and doctors don't advise it. When he ended his fast, he resumed eating but he did not put the weight back on. There's a video about his experience here.
I've fasted, and I can tell you that after the first three days, your hunger goes away, because your body switches to burning ketones (which are derived from body fat) and so you're not hungry. Our bodies can burn two kinds of fuel: glucose (sugar) and ketones. As long as we have glucose in our blood, our bodies don't make ketones, and excess glucose is stored in fat cells. When our bodies run low on glucose, we switch to breaking down fat into ketones, which our bodies then burn for energy. That's the basis of the Atkins diet and the reason it works. I'll be joining the millions of other Americans who will swear, on New Year's Eve, that they're going to lose weight in the New Year. Good luck to all of them, and good luck to me.
One of my readers concluded a comment with this sentence: "Can't wait for your Christmas blog and New Years full of wisdom and hope through the sparkling words of the author !!"
Oh shoot, really? Now I'm blushing! I've always thought that my readers, through their comments, were the ones who were full of wisdom, and I still feel that way. But thank you for the kind review.
The high temperature today is supposed to be about 50F° and the low tonight is forecast to be 38°F. The storm gets here tomorrow, and tomorrow night is forecast to be 9°F (-12.8°C). I'm gonna be burning those dinosaurs (or whatever heating oil is made of). I've seen colder weather here and I've written about it. But I shouldn't complain. The temperature in Great Falls, Montana, is currently -25°F, and today's high temperature there is forecast to be -12°F.
For Christmas, I gave Nuria a Garmin GPS for her car. Now she is car-less, so I tested the GPS on my Jeep. It worked fine. I figure she'll need it until she knows the area. Even then, it's a handy device when you're driving around a part of the city that is unfamiliar to you. I used to have a TomTom GPS and it worked great. It worked on a trip to Inverness, Florida, and back home—a 24 hour round trip. After that, the TomTom prompted me to update the map. I tried to, and it began installing the new map. But then it said that it was out of memory and couldn't install the new map, and the old map was gone, so the TomTom was useless. I threw it into the trash after using it one time.
I got up at 6:30AM today, after being awake since 3:30AM. I always wake up during the night and usually can't get back to sleep. Now it's 8AM and a light rain is falling. I will drive Nuria to a doctor today to pick up paperwork for her permanent residency application. She has to sign it in front of the doctor, and the doctor has to sign it in front of Nuria. Then it goes into a special envelope, is sealed, and is sent to her lawyers in Chicago, then they check everything and send it to USCIS (Customs and Immigration Service). Nuria and the USCIS have been swapping paperwork since 2020. But the money flows only one way, from her to them. The lawyers charge $4500, and the government charges a few thousand dollars. When all is done, the paperwork will have taken about three years and the cost will total about $7000. Even after that, she can be denied residency. The government promises nothing.
I hope my next blog post will be more Christmas-y and less complaining. I recently bought some fire logs, and today would be a good time to use one or two. Stay cheerful, people!
It's Wednesday, December 21st, the middle of the work week and the first day of winter for this year in North America. Winter begins on the day of the winter solstice, which is today. In earth's southern hemisphere, winter began on June 21 this year.
Coincidentally, on this first day of winter, a raging blizzard is crossing the country and headed my way. It is due to arrive in my city on Friday. The low Friday night is expected to be 12°F, and the high on Saturday is expected to be 27°F. Christmas will be a little warmer: a high that day of 32°F and a low of 15°F. And it's "just" December. January is the really cold month where I live.
I broke the handle off the sliding patio door that leads to my backyard. I just yanked it too hard. So I ordered a new door handle from Home Depot. It came today. I removed the old handle and tried to install the new handle, but it didn't quite fit. The mounting holes were very close to the same distance apart as on the old handle, but not close enough. Then I dropped one of the parts of the outside handle (a part I need to use with the new handle). I saw the part fall—a black, metal piece about 1/2 inch square. I watched it fall to the outside step and bounce off, then fall into the clover beside the step. I looked for it carefully, pulling clover up so I could see the ground. I couldn't find it and finally I called for Nuria's help. She looked for it and pulled more clover out of the way. Neither of us could find it, even though I saw exactly where it fell into the clover. It was freezing cold and after an hour I gave up trying to fix the door. I decided to replace the patio door. But not just the door: the whole installation including the track the door rolls on. It's old and needs replacing, anyway.
It's also time for a new garage door. So that's on my list for the beginning of the year. I may wait until spring so that it won't be so cold when the installers are working. And oh yes, I just remembered, the garage has two old wind turbines on its roof. One has failed and won't turn. The other is equally old and will likely fail soon. So add two roof turbines to the "to do" list. I wonder if I can get all this done for under five thousand dollars. That's what it cost me to remodel my kitchen when I moved into this house. Oh well, what is money for, if not to spend?
Two milestones for Nuria today: One, she passed her medical exam (another $455) and is expected to see the doctor tomorrow to pick up the paperwork. (This is in regard to her application for permanent resident status). Second, the Toyota incident (in which her vehicle was totaled by another driver) is moving forward. The other driver's insurance has taken full financial responsibility for Nuria's auto accident, after they looked at photos of the Camry and determined the car is a total loss. I don't know what they'll do next, but the insurance claim is in their ballpark now.
I hope everyone is well, and stay safe, y'all. It's a busy time of year for the roads. Drivers are distracted by thoughts of Christmas shopping, and the expected bad weather will only make the roads more dangerous. Take care.
A cappella group Pentatonix is known for their Christmas albums. This song of the day is 2014's Mary, Did You Know by Pentatonix. There are many recordings of this song, sung by various artists. The oldest version I know of was recorded by American Christian singer and record producer Michael English in 1991. Since then, hundreds of singers have covered the song.
I've posted this before, but inasmuch as we're approaching Christmas, I think it's appropriate to post it again.
The song of the day is Christmas 1915 by Irish singing group Celtic Thunder. The song is about a Christmas truce that occurred on the front lines during World War 1.
One of my readers left a comment to remind me of another Christmas song, traditionally sung at midnight as the year ends. I'm talking about Auld Lang Syne, and it is one of my favorite Christmas and New Year's songs. Thanks to LL for the reminder of this great song.
According to Wikipedia,
The text is a Scots-language poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 but based on an older Scottish folk song. In 1799, it was set to a traditional tune, which has since become standard. ... The poem's Scots title may be translated into standard English as "old long since" or, less literally, "long long ago", "days gone by", "times long past" or "old times". Consequently, "For auld lang syne", as it appears in the first line of the chorus, might be loosely translated as "for the sake of old times".
And so,
The song of the day is Auld Lang Syne sung by singer, songwriter, and actress Lea Michele (Lea Michele Sarfati).
Christmas is a week away.
The song of the day is 2022's Last Christmas by a cappella group Pentatonix featuring Japanese YouTubers Heikin and Seikin.
