The end of both the autumn season and the calendar year. On the shortest day of the year we celebrated our friend Meg’s birthday at The Central, where her husband set up a surprise party and urged us all to get sitters and have a night out. We are glad we did. It was fun to be out with friends, sans kids, in a place where we’ve all been many times but in a completely different context. We dressed up, too!
We’ve been going to the library every other week or so to pick out new books with Charlie. This last time he confidently stated he wanted a book about firetrucks, so we asked the kind librarian to help us find firetruck books and they delivered. Charlie enjoyed one on the ride home.
We went back to Ohio for Christmas and had a nice trip.
The drive out was easy. Despite leaving late because we had a busy week and hadn’t packed much, the weather was nice and traffic light on the drive, so we made good time. Listened to Birdseye, Adventures of a Curious Man by Mark Kurlansky.
Some highlights from the trip:
- Making Dutch Babies on Christmas morning. We used Smitten Kitchen’s recipe and did one savory and one sweet.
- Making Sean Brock’s rabbit stew with black pepper dumplings recipe. We brought a rabbit from Hemlock Hill.
- Seeing Charlie play with his cousins.
- Charlie getting time with his grandparents and feeling completely comfortable at their house, opening up and being silly like he does at home.
- Working on a project with my Dad: Refinishing the top of an old work bench and mounting it to a cart with wheels. We took off about 1/8 of an inch of old wood with a power plane, evened it out with a belt sander, tightened the through bolts to squeeze everything back together, cut a straight edge, added a carpenter’s vice, and then put a mixture of beeswax and mineral oil on top.
- My cousins, uncle, and I eating Paqui One Chip Challenge chips. I eat a lot of hot stuff, but this was rough. It made me hiccup involuntarily for the first five minutes while I sweat like crazy.
- Playing the Four Letter Word Game.
- Learning and playing Tunk.
One of the bigger challenges this year is that Charlie got overstimulated and clingy at most of the bigger get-togethers we went to, so either Amanda or I spent a lot of 1:1 time with Charlie. It makes sense and is developmentally appropriate for 2.5 years old. We also think he is going through another leap right now because his language skills are increasing almost every day right now. His nap schedule was way off, too. Nonetheless, it is tiring for us and frustrating when we only see certain people once or twice a year and spend a huge chunk of that time not able to socialize. But we are reminding ourselves that this is a stage and we are thankful for the time we did get, and for the dedicated time with Charlie.
My cousin Ryan filled me in on Smokin’ Ed Currie. He is the one who cultivated the Carolina Reaper pepper and now has a new world’s hottest pepper: Pepper X. It apparently takes about 10 years to make a stable cross-breed chile.
On the way back from Ohio we stopped in Pittsburgh to visit our friends Erin and Tyler, which is becoming a tradition. Some highlights:
- Charlie and Gus playing outside with the chickens
- Charlie getting to pet some cats. We don’t have any pets, so he was thrilled and surprisingly gentle.
- Tyler gave me a couple nice pieces of black cherry wood to turn on the lathe.
- Erin shared some gardening advice and a book recommendation (The Old Way).
- Having a fantastic meal at Nicky’s Thai in Sewickley. I had Khao Soi and loved it. I’ll probably try to make some at home.
- Tyler played Bon Iver’s 22, A Million on the record player while the fireplace crackled and snow flurried outside.
- I enjoy the vibes that putting on a record gives, and love when someone puts one on when we visit, but I have no interest in getting a record player or collecting records.
- Making Black & Green Manhattans (Manhattans with Zirbenz) and tasting some double oak bourbon. Tyler recommended seeking out Old Forester 1910.
- Playing Trivial Pursuit. The guys won.
- One theory of Poe’s death is that he was so distressed about being forced to participate in Cooping that he had a panic attack and died
- Playing Monopoly Deal. Amanda won.
- Just chatting and laughing with old friends.
Every time we visit Erin and Tyler I’m tempted to buy a Moccamaster or Bonavita coffee maker, but I’m stubbornly attached to our hand grinding and manual pour over.
Every year I try to get Erin and Tyler to blog, to no avail. Erin is an incredible artist and I think she’d write great blog posts. We share a lot of common interests, but completely diverge on the blogging front.
Some choice quotes from this year:
“No, I haven’t read your blog. In fact, I’ve never read any blog.”
Erin
“I don’t know what you internet people do.”
“The collective has a hard time getting people to document their work because we are all too busy actually doing things to blog about it.”
“Your blog is about nothing… I mean, you blog about whatever is going on in your life at the time…nothing in particular.”
Tyler
The drive back home was decent. Lots of rain, but Charlie was in a good mood and actually napped. Listened to Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time. Had a surreal experience where I thought we were both an hour further ahead in the audiobook and an hour further in our drive than we actually were. Losing an hour while listening to a book that challenges our standard conceptions of time is weird.
We had a NYE get together at our house with Erica, Trevor, and Zoey.
- We made pizza in the Ooni. The dough came out great and was easy to work with. I’m getting the hang of the Ooni.
- We made Tiki drinks. Nui Nui (rum, cinnamon, vanilla, orange, lime) and Yuletide (tequila, cranberry, lime, orange).
- We had many appetizers and dips.
- Amanda made a toddler charcuterie board just for the kids.
- The kids made art and danced.
- Zoey made herself at home and tried to sleep on the couch when her parents said it was time to go home and go to bed.
It was a nice time. We started in the afternoon and were all in bed before midnight.
Over the break I finally finished the eighth book of The Baroque Cycle. The series took me two years to finish. Which giant Neal Stephenson book should I read next? I’ve read over half of his fiction bibliography so far. We’ll see what strikes my fancy in a couple months when I’m ready to start another, but right now I’m leaning toward Anathem.
I had big plans for overhauling this blog over the break, but didn’t do them. I took a break and hung out with my family instead. I’ll get to it eventually.
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