Spider-thon

After watching "Spider-man: Far From Home," it became necessary for something that I'm fairly certain many Marvel fans all over the world are now doing:  having a "Spider-thon."  We started tonight with the first of the "Spider-man" movies, the one that started it all nearly twenty years ago.  I'll always remember the state of the country at that time, as does anyone who was alive then, and how much this movie was needed in a way.  There were other uplifting moments to be sure, but at that time we really needed a superhero blockbuster.  And it was done so well too - up until this first movie, we had a live action Spider-man series that was embarrassing, mainly because special effects were so amazingly limited back then.  But this new movie handled the webslinging and swinging in the way that comic book fans had always dreamed of.  Before this movie, we had the X-Men movie, and the Batman movies and way back before that the Superman movies. So we didn't have much in the way of CGI.  So you can imagine how thrilled we were to see Spider-man swinging up and down the streets of New York, or the Green Goblin actually flying by, throwing those terrifying pumpkin bombs.  But even more than the CGI effects, the characters and story of this movie is so heartfelt and enjoyable.  We finished up this movie tonight, and of course tomorrow night it's on to "Spider-man 2."

We were out very briefly today, mainly because Nana needed to get out of the house for a while.  We went over to make a donation to Goodwill, and we stopped there to shop for what was supposed to be a super quick visit.  But Mom and Nana found a bunch of things, and we found some friends too, and Maddie found a Ghostbusters hoodie she liked, and I found a white elephant gift for next Christmas, a murder mystery literally called "White Elephant."  That should be pretty funny.  

We stopped at Chick-Fil-A after that, actually going into the restaurant to stop and eat.  We used up a few of our gift cards, and joined a lot of other people at that place.  It was packed.  I suspect everyone else had the same idea.

Tonight before bed, Maddie and I played the Star Wars trivia game again.  It's a funny game that goes between extraordinarily easy questions and insanely trivial ones that I don't even know.  Maddie likes this game, so odds are that we'll be playing it a few more times this week, but the goal is to do more board games as the week goes on.

I put up the mezuzah on the front door this afternoon, saying the proper blessing and then fixing it to the door post at the proper angle in the proper location.  It's there now, a very nice gift from Mom, and a reminder of the importance of God's Word in our lives.  A scripture in Deuteronomy 6:4-9 tells the Jews at that time to put God's Word on the doorposts and elsewhere.  I've always wanted one of these, and was glad to post it up on the door today.

This morning I took a walk around Devil's Tower.  One neat thing about the internet are POV walking videos that you can watch while on the treadmill.  It was about a 45 minute walk, but for just a short time I was right back there at Devil's Tower again.  I think I've been there about three or four times in person, and miss those trips terribly.  So these POV videos are a consolation prize, and on top of that there's exercise on the treadmill, so it all works out.

Speaking of exercise, we replenished the wood pile today, and gathered up a lot of the kindling as well.  There's a cold snap coming next week, and we'll be ready for it, at least with the firewood.  We went through a lot more of it than usual, burning fires in the fireplace all throughout the Christmas season.  We didn't go through the entire pile last winter, and here we are at the end of December, already going to get more.  It's a lot, and it took a good while to pile up, but again, we should be good to go until at least February, right?  Although another warming trend is on the way after the cold snap, and the weather lately has been so warm that I was even somewhat tempted to put on the ceiling fan last night.

It was sprinkling a bit today, a sign of things to come as tomorrow will be rainier.  That was another reason to get the wood today.  The weather was still decent enough to have all kinds of visitors to our back deck.  

Mom put out bird feeders, and we saw finches, cardinals, tufted titmouse, chickadees, and a long-awaited woodpecker at the suet feeder.  We just put the suet feeder out, so it wasn't that much of a wait really.  Mom got some new feeders for Christmas, and some birdhouses too.  A few of those were hung up already, with others coming soon.

Our oven is pretty much gone now.  We were oven shopping today, and we're hoping to get one quickly, as Maddie needs her pizza.  We can use the stove top for heating things up, and the microwave too.  But the oven is older, and we're needing a new one.  Thirty inches wide, range, five burners, two ovens... we'll see what we can find here.

Tonight we continued our reading of Kingdom Keepers, and this book is shorter and moving along quickly.  Maddie had a good day today, doing a lot of cleaning up in her room and relaxing too.  We were watching a few things throughout the day, listening to Christmas music still, because that's okay.  It was a decent day, and we went to sleep earlier, the sound of rain helping us sleep through the night.