Undecorating and Planning

Today was the day we packed up a majority of the Christmas items:  the tree, the ornaments, the cards, and most of the garlands.  Mark wasn't sure how he was going to get all of the breakfast cereal out of his Cereal Ornaments, and I suggested using boiling hot water.  Surprisingly, the loops of cereal shrank like shrinky-dinks and floated right out of the opening.  He experimented with cold water, which shrank them down, only not nearly as quickly.

Our Winter Configuration is to have the round table in the front window, and the couch in the breakfast nook.  This year's Christmas tree was especially large and dense, and having it out of the northern window area brings much more light into our living room.  The couch is next to the southern windows, so it creates a sunny place for us to sit (assuming the sun comes out).  The down side of all of this is that Smokey the cat thinks that the table is in the northern window for him to perch on so he can see if his second owners who live across the street are home (they love him greatly and I'm afraid they spoil him a little).  (John wonders where Smokey is, looks around the house, and finds him napping on the table....arg.)

The gilt angels on the mantel will stay there until the Ides of Winter.  The hellebore is still blooming in our front flower box.  The Child is still home from school, and I'll be glad when he starts attending classes again and isn't spending quite so much time watching You-Tube videos and playing Fortnite.

After cleaning, Mark and I walked downtown for a New Years Day early tea.  I keep hoping the place we went to will have poppy seed bagels, but for reasons inexplicable, they only seem to have sesame seed or everything bagels.  It's a fairly nice place to write during the day, but, alas, like most establishments in Eugene, they close at 7PM.

As we walked back, Mark led us on a detour to look at various murals, and some new venues that have opened up.  The murals are well executed; the artists used color and shading to make layers and figures pop out of the plane of the walls.  The food venues looked interesting, but I'm not sure how well they would lend themselves to writing.  On the way back home, we discussed various writing venues in Eugene, and came to the conclusion that building a writer's shed in the back yard might be the best route to go -- although I'm not sure how conducive to writing we could make it:  if we keep a structure simple and relatively small, we shouldn't need a building permit from the city, but that means no water or electricity in it.  Possibly a small solar panel and battery setup could provide rudimentary lighting, but heat in the winter would be an issue.


Gym Report:  Went to the gym on the last day of 2019 and did my old routine.  Predictably, today my upper chest and arms are sore.  I'm going to continue to alternate new and old routines... possibly going to the gym four days instead of three days out of the week.