Only one more sleep until 2025

One of the reasons we could be gone for a whole week is that I was able to take my turn covering the clinic remotely. With the exception of split pea soup for lunch and a walk to the creek while the weather was nice, it meant a full day on my laptop and phone, handling patient matters. After I finished video visits, Dear Husband and I kept each other company at the kitchen table while he put together the Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol Lego set I bought, along with the pieces necessary to transform it into A Muppet Christmas Carol.

In the evening we worked on another puzzle and finished watching Oppenheimer. We marked New Year’s Eve with the hilarious British short, a German/Continental tradition since the 1970s, “Dinner for One.” Then we played Trivial Pursuit with dessert and champagne. It was the Genus IV edition (c) 1998s, so the questions were newer than the original edition I grew up playing but older than the Millennial edition. No one won by getting all the colors and answering a question in the center or answering an entire card. Hockey, Wagner, and Presidential quotations were overrepresented in the questions, which had an awkward syntax that made them hard to parse. The categories also had the "wrong" colors.

Recipe: Here’s the eggnog pie that has featured on these pages before. Mix 1.5 cups eggnog + a 3.4-oz instant vanilla pudding packet + either 1 cup of heavy whipping cream, whipped OR ~2 cups or 2/3 of a container of whipped cream. Pour into a 9” graham cracker pie crust, sprinkle with nutmeg, and chill until serving. East peasy, lemon squeezy!

2024 went out with a bang: Dear Husband and I stayed up late enough to hear the fireworks at midnight, and then we rolled over and went to sleep. Happy New Year! After a quiet morning and an early lunch, we packed everything up and drove back to Pittsburgh, taking the scenic route along the Lincoln Highway (Route 30) and stopping for ice cream at the Lincoln Highway Creamery, which was open on the holiday and happy to let me taste the teaberry (tastes like Pepto Bismol!). DH opted for the black cherry, and I finished off the tub of queen of hearts (their version of death by chocolate, with raspberry to boot). The drive over the Laurel Highlands was a little dicey, with the beginnings of a winter storm, but we made it home to Rosamunda, who was happy to see us. She's such a snugglepuss that we don't get the cold shoulder; instead, she wants ALL the attention, pets, and affection she missed while we were gone, with interest. She's purring on his lap right now, but if he tries to go to bed without tonight, there will be meows. So he will sleep with her in the guest room tonight!