The holidays around here were quiet, I guess, which is okay. Christmas was low-key; we didn’t even really decorate, in part, because those sorts of things are buried in the back of the storage unit we’re still working through, and if there was a tree in the way, putting up the bookshelves we bought ourselves would be more difficult. Gifts tended toward quality rather than quantity. The lovely spouse and I bought each other a long-overdue new bed, for example, and my youngest child, the budding marine biologist, got her very own freshwater aquarium to care for. And things arrived when they arrived – honestly most of the things were difficult to wrap anyway.

On Christmas Eve, we sat in our library, in the shadow of the new bookshelves, eating fancy cheese and sipping the honey-cherry bourbon we put up in September, listening to Patrick Stewart’s “The Night Before Christmas” recording, then went to bed rather early.

I honestly needed a quiet evening after the eventful afternoon, as earlier in the day I noticed a leak in my fish tank in the living room, which is, unsurprisingly, a bit stressful. I managed to temporarily patch things with silicone sealant and reducing the water level a bit, though it looks like the tank may have picked up a chip in the glass during the move. So, I spent much of the afternoon, after settling the patch, trying to locate a replacement, and likely found the last available thirty-seven gallon tank in the county, as part of a start-up kit (so I now have spares of all the extra do-dads like heater and filter), but at least it was on sale. My patches held until I did the replacement on Boxing Day, and honestly, things look pretty good afterwards:

The rest of the holiday break was novel for us, as we actually had guests for a few days. Our friends Jonah and Milo came down from New England to spend a few days with us checking out the sites in Richmond. We’ve known Jonah for more than a decade from the con scene, and Milo and Catherine have been great friends since they’ve been four our five, and since they’ve moved back to the east coast after spending a few years in California, we’ve tried to get the kids together on a semi-regular basis. We spent a couple of days visiting some museums and other places, playing some games, and generally hanging out and catching up.

After spending so many years in a tiny little house, we’re way out of practice hosting guests, though we’re working on re-learning how, and this attempt went pretty well, all told. Still, everyone had a good time, and it was nice seeing our friends again.

New Years Eve was pretty uneventful as well; we watched part of our friend Mikey’s online NYE show, and honestly went to bed around 10pm, because we were tired after our adventures in the days previous. On New Years Day proper, I did my traditional First Day Hike at Pocahontas State Park, and my lovely spouse came along with me. We did a nice three mile hike around the lake and then had a pleasant lunch date, before we came home and I started settling into the concept of returning to work on January 2nd.

So that’s that, and I’m settling back into the regular grind, hoping, as stated previously, that the year ahead is, well…boring.