And here's what Santa Buc-ee brought: a Buc-ee Duck-ee, complete with the Santa hat on its head. The others are looking on with jealousy, because it's a pretty cool gift.
Speaking of "pretty cool," today was one of those days where things were very cold outside. The temperature is settling in at a pretty miserable temperature, especially with all the rain and so forth. The birds are absolutely loving our back deck though. We've got these big hairy downy woodpeckers dropping in, and they do drop in early because I can hear them like an alarm clock in the morning. We have wrens too - this reminds me of an interesting research of something called Wren Day that we looked up. It was referred to in "Hogfather," and of course I've slightly heard of it outside of that. But still, we had no idea what it was... and now we do. Wren Day is just an excuse to kill small birds, I think. The reasoning has something to do with revenge for revealing the location of soldiers, or revealing the location of St. Stephen. Either way, people across the pond feel very vindictive about wrens on December 26 each year. Mom and I were listening to our podcast about this odd occasion, and don't worry: this is one that we won't be celebrating. We love wrens.
This afternoon I was on the treadmill starting a new journey. It's a virtual path of course, one where I'm walking towards the Forbidden City. We were there in 2008, which seems like forever ago. I'll have to print out this bib. I was going to save this one until February, but this was a Black Friday sale and I'm sort of forced to do it now. And that's okay - there's not really a super "Christmas" virtual journey in the collection yet. This one will be fun, particularly if I can line up the map on the treadmill with the one on this phone as I march along.
Regardless, in regards to what I'm watching as I walk, it's the rest of the Home Alone movies. Oh yes, I'm in the dark times now, finishing up "Home Alone 4," which is just so cringe. I like the actors involved, but the writing is so bad. And the budget is so low, and I'm wondering why this had to happen. Again, the first three movies were the best. Now I'm going to undiscovered country, watching this fifth movie about a Christmas heist or something. It looks really bad. But I'm committed, I tell you! This is the year that I watch all six Home Alone movies! If I don't get it done this year, I'll have to watch the fourth movie again, and I just really don't want to do that any more. I know Maddie doesn't - I asked her if she wanted in on this Home Alone fun with these bad movies. Polite pass!
Okay, speaking of movies, today I was watching "A Bug's Life" and "It's Tough to be a Bug" for research purposes. We're doing this insect series in January, or a bug one anyway. I made this connect-the dots tonight, one that makes you remember that yes, there were plenty of spiders on the ark!
Yeah. There's that. We had a nice breakfast that Mom made for us, and we're off the detox a bit, a scheduled break - so no headaches for me. Mom was packing up things today, and we were just trying to stay warm a good bit. I've been wearing this Chewbacca Santa Cap all day long, plus my TMBG Christmas sweatshirt indoors. Comfy and warm.
Only a few more days until our AI song generated contest. It's not about winning and losing - it's about guessing who did what song, and just listening to everyone's ideas. I technically won it last year, but again, I genuinely don't care about that so much. It's just a lot of fun. Camille and Isaac were letting everyone know today they were working on theirs, and Maddie's got one song in the contest now - I'm listening to it at the moment. It'll be fun hearing what everyone does!
Tonight is a long taekwondo session. It's the last second degree black belt night for Maddie, as her testing is Monday. After class there was this extended practice session for her upcoming performance at Edgestravaganza, the Christmas night here at taekwondo. Maddie was training with the bo staff, and also kicking boards tonight too. Lots of different things going on!
We got home in time to eat dinner - one of the Factor meals we got this week was a shawarma salad, which was pretty unique. It was time for a movie after that, and Maddie's request was "Christmas at the Plaza," a fun Christmas romance that takes place at the Plaza of course. And on top of the Plaza's signature Christmas tree is something called a finial dabra. Do you know what that is? It's mentioned several times over the course of the movie, and until watching this movie I never knew it had a name - this is a Christmas tree topper. You've seen it before. In fact, we had one growing up on my tree. I think we have one packed up downstairs in the basement.
Here's the head bellman, Reginald, looking at the glass finial dabra that he never got to finish back in the day. Of course, this being a Christmas movie, you might expect his story might shift soon. It's a fun movie. We might try a few more of these Hallmark Christmas movies, including the one with the dog that Mom likes, and the one with the train that I like. I'm also eyeing another one too, if we have time! Lots of Christmas movies to go, and only so much time. We've managed a lot though!
Tonight, we read from "Hogfather" before bedtime, and after that prayers. Maddie left her boots by the fireplace, because tomorrow is St. Nicolas Day. Hopefully Krampus isn't anywhere near tonight!
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