First, happy holidays!

For the Wage Slaves among you, Happy Day Of Getting Off Early! Me, I'm off today. My temp job supervisor wanted a four-day weekend or something. The R.C. is working, but getting off at noon.

My Holiday Preparations are done (she said smugly). I have ham-and-yam supplies for dinner tomorrow, and half a teeny-tiny pumpkin pie (courtesy of Whole Foods) for dessert. I have a pile o'presents for the R.C. to unwrap, and a pile o'presents for me to unwrap.

Other than that? My life has not been eventful recently.

I shipped a small number of gifts this year, and at least half of them probably won't arrive by Christmas. (I'm so lame. I mean--I'm unemployed. How could I not have found time to go to the Post Office in time? I have no excuse. All I can say is that somehow I lost the week of December 10. I blinked one day and it was the 17th.)

Much chit-chat back and forth with the L-i-K-S about the dreaded tax bill. She's going to contact The Authorities after Christmas and see how much of it we actually have to pay.

In the recent clean-up, some of what I found were old copies of my resume. I spent some time this morning reworking my current resume to include new information.

On the knitting/crochet front, I'm branching out into hats. I made five yesterday. Or, rather, I made part of five yesterday. I wound up tearing four of them out before they were finished. Either I'd selected the wrong size crochet hook or I ran out of a yarn I can't get more of and so have to use what I do have for a smaller project or the instructions made my head spin. Sigh. Learning new things can be a pain. (But it's also interesting.) Today I'm working on a combo hatscarf. I found a pattern but since patterns weren't successful for me yesterday, I'm actually staring at a hatscarf I already own and just planning to duplicate that as much as I can.

In that same arena, I'm starting to accumulate a number of unfinished projects here and there. I need to get a job so I can buy yarn to complete those. I have enough to finish one (or maybe two) hatscarves. After that, I'll have to find some other no-cost way to spend my leisure time.

Yesterday I cooked. Plum Chicken Thighs (a recipe the R.C. first made a week ago but that I wanted to try myself) (and use up the extra ingredients for) and Accordion Potatoes. I wasn't thrilled with the potatoes, but I think that was more User Error than any problem with the recipe. I'll have to try those again. The chicken thighs were tossed with Chinese 5-Spice and some salt, then lightly browned before being coated in a Plum Jam/Balsamic vinegar/chicken broth sauce. Pretty tasty.

In any case, I'm mostly here today to wish you all the happiest of holiday seasons (a bit lat for those of you who celebrated earlier this month), the best of New Years, and all the finest life has to offer, now and into the future.