A Week (or Whatever) in the Life: January 2, 2022

Christmas and New Year’s Eve have come and gone and I haven’t written a regular post in a few weeks, but I’m here now!

A big thing on my mind lately is that work is about to suck again. My fellow editor returned from maternity leave and work leveled out, but she announced last week that she’s leaving for a better job. Then my boss announced the same day that he’s also leaving for a new gig. I’m not sure where this leaves me, but I’m annoyed by it. I left my last job due to new management being horrible and turnover chaos, but here I am again.

Consuming

Here are some things I’ve recently read, watched, or bought.

Books and Other Words

cover of the book The Phoenix Empress shown in greyscale on kobo ereader. Features an armored person with their sword drawn, riding a horse — The Phoenix Empress

Yesterday, I finished the second book in the Their Bright Ascendancy trilogy by K. Arsenault Rivera, The Phoenix Empress. I bought the “omnibus” ebook of the series, and I’m on the third book, but I’m barely through half of the combined ebook. The third book seems very long. I am going to reserve my opinions about this book until I finish the series. It was good, but middle books are always preoccupied with setting up for the last book.

Meanwhile, on the internet:

All hail dead week, the best week of the year via The Atlantic. We should all embrace doing nothing in the last week of the year.
The tale of Jorts the cat or AITA for “perpetuating ethnic stereotypes” about Jorts? via Twitter (but originally reddit). This story has brought me joy. I won’t describe it, but you should read it. Then you can follow Jorts on twitter (the person who originally submitted the AITA post is now running the cat’s twitter account).

TV and Music

You may hardly be able to believe it, but I watched two entire movies this week: Ten Things I Hate about You and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. Both were entertaining. I had actually never seen Ten Things I Hate about You, despite probably being its target audience when it originally premiered. Overall, I liked it, but it did have some weird vestiges of nineties-ness. I decided to watch To Wong Foo to expand my gay pop culture knowledge because that’s how I roll. I’m proud to now know where the phrase “more legs than a bucket of chicken” originated.

Rampant Consumerism

We can’t talk about Christmas without talking consumerism. Kirk got me a lovely robe (that I requested) and a really nice jewelry box (that I did not request, but was happy for). I used to have all my earrings and things in a little set of plastic cubbies and it was really annoying to dig out a matching pair. Now I can see everything and it is glorious!

I also went to the bookstore on one of my days off this week to get a few books I wanted with the Christmas money I had in my pocket (thanks, Grandma). I made an outing of it and got pastry too.

a four-tiered jewelery box with the lid open and each drawer slightly pulled out to reveal earrings (mostly). The inside of the lid has a mirror and there are hooks to hang necklaces. — new jewelry box

a stack of three books: A Marvellous Light; Nightwatch on the Hinterlands; and Grist (a cookbook) — new jewelry box

Making Things and Doing stuff

a 20 by 28 inch puzzle, glued together and set in a black frame. The puzzle features a pond with a giant swan, a lion with a suspicious look on his face, and lots of other whimsy — a framed puzzle

My mom came to visit the week before Christmas. We hadn’t seen each other since the pandemic started, so it was good to finally see her again. We mostly hung out and watched Christmas-themed TV, but we also did this cool puzzle, which we have now framed. We spend most of a day on it, which included a significant amount of time trying to keep Fritz from absconding with stray pieces.

I, of course, did a lot of Christmas baking, culminating in these big-ass cookie plates. I tried a few new recipes this year including these almond horn cookies and orange and poppy seed pretzels. I also wanted to share a photo of the dulce de leche fudge I made, because the swirl on top looks very pretty.

For Christmas eve, I wanted to make a kransekake, and I did, in fact, attempt it. I didn’t come together the way I wanted, but everyone agreed that it tasted good. I found the dough was too crumbly to shape into rings to make the characteristic tree structure, but I piled up the cookies into an abstract tree, which is still kind of festive.

For New Year’s, I tried my hand at a lucky batch of beans. I know black-eyed peas on new year’s are supposedly lucky. I had yellow-eye peas, which I hope are lucky enough. I made a really good recipe from the Jubilee cookbook with them, but did not post a photo because it just looked like a big glob.

a large plate of holiday cookies including: ginger snaps, fudge, m&m cookies, toffee, millionarie's shortbread, almond horns, and a poppy seed pretzel — cookie plate mania

a block of dulce de leche fudge that has dulce de leche festively swirled into the top of the fudge — cookie plate mania

Cat Therapy

Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves. I have to note that I thought for sure Fritz would wreak havoc on the Christmas tree. He seems like exactly the type of cat to nest inside, but he was actually afraid of it. He didn’t even want to be in the same room as the tree at first. He resolutely refused to go near it for the whole season. The reason remains a mystery to the humans of the house.

Fritz the cat in the windowsill of my office. He's in a defensive crouch, and facing a squirrel that's on the fence outside — office squirrel watch

in the foreground, me on a sofa, you can see half of my face. In the background: my bed wit hFritz the cat sitting on it, starting right at the camera — office squirrel watch