A New Day

 

Happy New Year from the Nutcracker collection!  These guys (and gals) got packed away today, one of the big accomplishments of the day.  We all woke up a little later, as we were up late last night, as Bob Cratchit would say, "making ourselves merry."  We had a nice breakfast, and given that there is Rose Bowl Parade to watch anymore, we opted to do a traditional English thing and see a performance of Dick Whittington and His Cat.  Mom used to see this live in England, and has fond memories of this.  Madison and I had no idea what was going on!  But we enjoyed it nonetheless, and it was great of someone to share a production of this for the weekend.  We saw that, and actually another production after that, all while taking Christmas items down and packing them away.  There was a performance of "Peter Pan" from Chicago that was being shared online, so we watched that one as well.

Today is 2021.  Madison said it seems like the longest day all year.  Which might be her first bad joke of the year.  I'm a proud father.

My mother dropped by with some gifts for Madison, and that was nice.  It was pouring rain out there, but we were talking about getting together on Monday to get the Christmas tree from the Botanical Gardens there.  I have a season pass to that, and may go there for walks in the near future.  Sounds pleasant!

Mom and Nana were working on the weather stripping for the garage door as well, so we were at least getting a few things done today.  I was getting together some ideas for the future writing project.  Getting a bath or a shower somehow injects a spark of thought, and suddenly I'm writing after that.  But I got the thought of adding a bit of the Great Leslie and Professor Fate to our upcoming mountaineering series, and I think it should be fun.

Tonight we watched one of my favorite movies of all time, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."  If you don't like this movie, I don't understand you.  I remember watching this on New Year's Eve a long time ago, and I've seen it so many times since that I have several seeds memorized before they finish playing.  There's so much in this movie, and so many people in it!  Anyway, Nana and I sat together and watched this, as Mom worked on our latest puzzle by the Christmas tree.  I was working on that one earlier, so I can claim some credit.  But Mom has done quite a bit of work on that one today.

New Year's Day is always such a letdown, isn't it?  It's a boring day as far as traditions and so forth go.  We used to watch a parade and eat crumpets, but both of those are gone, and we're not really into football so much.  But we made do with some other programming, and Mom made a delicious fish dinner tonight, so we actually had a pretty nice day.  Nana was off and on today, but we kept the distraction machine going and came out okay in the end. 

Madison had a relaxing day, doing some Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley as well.  She was on her phone quite a bit, and that's okay for another few days.  We'll get back to work next week, with taekwondo, school, and then piano too.  

Tonight we did our Bible study from the book of Judges, and we read from "The Last Battle," and said our prayers too.  It was a a good first day of the year.  We'll see how things go though, right?