It's Boxing Day in many countries, the day after Christmas in others. It's been a quiet day, a letdown, but not in a bad way, from the hullabaloo that was Christmas Day. Maybe someday I will feel as if I know what I'm doing pulling a holiday dinner together, things such as getting all the dishes at the right eating temperature at the right time. I can see why some people have two ovens, though it's not worth it to have an extra for just a couple meals a year. Maybe multiple microwaves would offer a solution in terms of being able to re-heat multiple dishes at the same time.
Son #2 and DiL= arrived late morning bringing dinner rolls, cranberry sauce, mushroom gravy, and more presents to add to the pile already under the tree. We took time in the middle of opening presents to do a Zoom call with my mom. We weren't able to see her, but she could see the five of us. We talked of this and that, what she got for Christmas lunch, how the various animals in Son #2 and Dil='s menagerie are doing, and the difficulty of seeing a barber or stylist while quarantining. As The Professor was bemoaning the state of his lengthening hair, Son #1 picked the scissors up off the desk and started trimming The Professor's hair. He didn't do a bad job; maybe The Professor will have him do it regularly rather than returning to the barber.
I somehow lost track of the number of books I put on my Amazon.com wishlist; I think I got more than a year's worth of reading.
The only one that was not on the list is the one on the far right, not really shown. It's Pie Academy, leading me to consider adding "make more pies" to my list of New Year's resolutions. I also got five 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles. Since I can't do puzzles while reading, I'll have to practice serious time management. I also hope to get back to learning on one of my rigid heddle looms, the reason for the weaving book shown. I've put most creative pastimes on hold while supposedly unpacking and putting away. Another New Year's resolution in the works, perhaps?
Since this is supposedly a pandemic blog, I should report that the number of new cases reported in Virginia yesterday was way down, about a third of each of the previous three days. I was expecting that and would have been more than extremely worried had it not been that low. Nationally, more than 327 thousand people have died, though the nukmber is likely higher because of deaths by other causes being hastened by covid-19.
Want to move to Finland? Too bad, applications have closed for the program through which forreign tech workers and their families can apply to relocate to Finland for 90 days to see if they might like to move there permanently. In that case, the government will assist with granting residency and assist with other paperwork items. There were 5,300 applications in the month in which applications were open. Most of those, 30 percent, came from Canada and the US. Fifty Britons applied, and there was actually one applicant from Vanuatu in the South Pacific. It sounds interesting, but I've read that Finnish is not at all easy to learn.
Perhpas tomorrow I'll comment more on the affairs of the world that matter to me and possibly some that don't. In the meantime, I have to finish my current book (Erik Larson's The Splendid and the Vile) so I can get started on one of the new ones. Oh, Son #2 also brought a book I wanted to borrow from him, Erik Larson's Thunderstruck.
