Even Christmas is work, Rebound, Slow creep
With Christmas Eve off and my shopping complete I had the day mostly to myself since Cindy had to teach some classes. There are surprisingly few times that I find myself alone at the house which is when I can typically be most productive so it was a nice change up. I went out and shot a video regarding the big new software release Tesla pushed for the holidays. It has a lot of cool features but the coolest to me was additional full self driving visualizations. Now the car shows stop signs, traffic lights, road markings and even trash cans on the screen. Slowly they are pulling the curtain back on what FSD will look like. For whatever reason the video got a lot of traction on YouTube as it already has over 3500 views in three days.
We got a new Ring doorbell for our front door on Black Friday. The end result was we had a spare one. I came up with a plan to utilize it as well as enhance the doorbell at the coop. I bought two AC adapters for the Ring devices. This not only allows you to no longer have to worry about charging the doorbells periodically. It also allows you to turn on “Live View” which allows you to watch the live video feed at anytime, something we could not do on the coop Ring since it has been out there.
The other Ring doorbell got mounted on the west side of the house, a spot where we have no camera coverage. Since the bear often visits from that side I thought it would be cool to have a way to see very clearly when he decides to come visit. Both installs had their own set of challenges I had to address but in the end I was successful in getting the end goal accomplished.
Tuesday was also our first day that was almost entirely sunny. The solar system showed just how robust it can be in those conditions, pumping out nearly 75kwh of power during the day. Considering we are at the time of year where solar production is at it’s absolute minimum with short days and the sun being low in the sky, I can’t wait to see what kind of numbers we achieve during the summer.
Christmas Eve Cindy’s mom, her boyfriend, Katie, the baby, and our friend Deb were over. Cindy created a giant spread of food that could have fed four times that amount of people. I enjoyed having people over the night before Christmas. It somewhat reminded me of my childhood when we would host Mom’s family at the old farmhouse in Gouglersville.
Our Christmas got started at a very gradual pace. Before a single present was touched I did the morning chicken duties and we ate breakfast. This would have been blasphemous in the past. Well into adulthood I would be up and ready to rip into presents well before 7AM. Yesterday it may have been after 8:30 until we started.
We always have a lot of presents under the tree but this year was a new record. Cindy went absolutely nuts buying stuff for baby DJ. It’s his first Christmas so it’s to be expected. I stuck mostly to Cindy’s wish list for her gifts with a few exceptions. My big gift had been sitting in our garage for a couple weeks so it wasn’t a surprise, a huge nine drawer mechanic style tool chest. It’s designed to replace the work bench I have had out there almost since the house was built.
I liked my stuff for sure but I didn’t really have anything to “play” with so I turned my attention to what else, work. The new chest/bench triggered a cascade of shuffling. The old bench had to be moved to the big shed, a large shelf in the big shed had to be moved to the little shed to make room for the bench, a smaller shelf from the small shed went into the a garage to replace the old wood shelf, which got relocated to the curb.
That was a long list of actions to type out, you can imagine how long it took to accomplish. The upside was it gave another opportunity to clean and purge. A bunch of stuff got thrown out or curbed to be given away. Cindy helped me do a lot of it along with her building some of the toys for DJ, who got to open his mountain of gifts a little after lunch with Katie and Daniel. I was quite tired after all of the work, but I still got that little burst of satisfaction for getting all of that shuffling completed.
Christmas evening the kids came back over. Katie and Daniel went with me to Ave Maria to ride EUCs around while Cindy watched the baby. Neither Katie or Daniel have ridden in quite awhile. We round around for 30-45 minutes checking out Christmas lights although there were not as many displays as you would anticipate in a community that is built around Christianity. It still was enjoyable and a good way to put a finishing bow on my 2019 Christmas experience.
One experience that has not been great is a very slow progressing sense of illness that has been creeping over me since early this week. The coughing and nose blowing has been ramping up along with a diminishing feeling of wellness. I am hoping a long onset doesn’t translate into a prolonged sickness. I just don’t need it.
As always I feel a sense of mild depression which seemingly always follows the day after Xmas. All the anticipation and preparation always seems to lead to feeling somewhat bummed out on the 26th, no matter how many good things the Christmas season contained.