Kinda amazed and dismayed at Nintendo right now: lately, every time I try to sign into their store to buy a game, the login process crashes / fails. Do they not want my money…?! 🎮

We normally take down Christmas on January 6th (growing up, we’d leave Christmas up until Epiphany) but given the craziness of last weekend (trip to the theater, an engagement party, chores, & migraines), we just didn’t get to it…so tonight is it, say farewell to the Home Alone house. 🎄📷

Just used an Apple Shortcut created by @jarrod to use OpenIA to generate image descriptions for alt text. 😁 Very cool and will be using it on conjunction with another Shortcut (for Micro.blog uploading) in the future. I keep forgetting I can use Shortcuts for scripting instead of C#. 🤣

Finished reading: Path of Stars by David North 📚
★★★☆☆

My least favorite of the series since book one, I finished this last night. The one places more emphasis on the main character, which is good but abandons almost all the other ones. It’s also a bit…meandering. Still, excited for the next one.

Over the weekend, my Partner and I were offered tickets to see Mrs. Doubtfire at the local theater. 🎭 It was an unexpected treat (our friends had just come back from London and were rather jet-lagged), both the show and the holiday decoration in the theater.🎄 📷

It was also the first serious snowfall of the season. 🌨️ It was mostly melted by the time we woke up in the morning but it was a pretty drive home (took back roads, to avoid all the people who are bad at driving in snow 🤣). ❄️

All in all, it was a lovely night. 👏🏻

🍿 In honor of Glynis Johns passing a few days ago, we watched The Court Jester tonight. It was an absolute riot, a musical comedy that spoofs elements of Robin Hood and had us laughing the entire time.
★★★☆☆

Finished reading: Astral Threads by David North 📚
★★★☆☆

I finished reading this last night (woke up with the kindle on my chest)… 🤭 It’s the fourth of the series and progresses nicely but leaves you with a giant cliffhanger. 😱 That said, each book is better than the previous.

Whilst out walking on my lunch break, I saw some winter lettuce. 😀 🚶🏼‍♂️ 🥬 📷

It was good to get out of the house for some fresh air; I really need to do more of that this Winter.

Tried out the Copilot app but this isn’t going to work for me. I want to love it (it’s so pretty) but it’s missing fundamental features I’ve seen / used in other app (bulk-import, transaction renaming rules, the ability to import Apple Savings transactions). 😭

I didn’t get nearly as much reading done in 2023 as I’d planned but that’s just the way the cookies crumble. I plan to do more reading in 2024 and spend some of my reading time focusing on books outside the fantasy / sci-fi genre.

Note: I only started using Micro.blog’s bookshelf feature midway through the year.

I always find it ridiculous companies (in this case a gym) make it so easy to sign up for services but if you want to cancel your membership, you have to go do it in person. 🤯 (The backstory: I want to move to a cheaper gym.)

I don’t really put much stock in the whole “New Years Resolutions” thing everyone else in the States seems to do…but I do like to set some overarching “goals” for the year. Last year, I only had two goals, one of which I succeeded at and the other was a miserable failure. So, this year, I’ve decided to be a little more ambitious.

Yes, I realize calling them “goals” instead of “resolutions” is a silly semantical quibble but it’s how I prefer things. 🤣

Goals

• Be Healthier
  • No junk food in January ¹
  • Start building better eating habits
  • Restart my fitness journey ²
• Continue Tracking Finances ³
  • Commit to a single financial aggregator ⁴
• Be More “there” For Family and Friends
  • Be a better Partner
  • Spend more time with my family
  • Reconnect with old friends, rekindle old relationships ⁵
• Work On My Career
  • Stop treading water
  • Regain my “senior” title (long story) ⁶
• Be More Organized
  • Clean things up as I’m working on them…or better yet, just don’t make a mess in the first place
  • Don’t go to bed with a dirty kitchen
  • Finally clean up and organize the basement…and keep it organized

I suspect I’m going to struggle with more than one of these goals but a new year is a good time to start improving one’s self. 🤞🏻

Aside from two events, the year hasn’t been too shabby…but those two events wreaked me. I’m very much looking forward to another go ‘round the sun, see everyone in 2024! 🥳🎉🎊

Finished reading: Moonlight Relic by David North 📚
★★★☆☆

In third of the series, the main character (Sam) really starts coming into his own…with a remarkable and rather unbelivable number of twists. Parts of the story are rather predictable but others, you never see them coming. 🤣

Last working day of the year for me and wow, I really need more coffee. ☕️🥱😪