Trees Are Always Beautiful

This morning the sun came out for the first time in five days? I can't even remember when I last saw it. I hate when we have a long string of cold gray days. I'm a summer person. I like warm or even hot days and green leaves and flowers. But even in weather like we've been having lately I find that it lifts my spirits to get outside for just a little bit. I took these pictures yesterday.

Do you ever stop and take time to really look at bare trees?

I do miss the leaves in winter and oak trees leaf out so late. By March I am extremely impatient to see some green.

But for now, I'm satisfied to enjoy nature's winter art show.

And here's one of our neighbor's pond.

Cold Weather Vices

Hot chocolate! In particular, Land O' Lakes hot chocolate in wonderful flavors like cinnamon and caramel. I don't have any right now. Last year I ordered it from Amazon. The Reasor's here has it and I did buy a couple of the big containers but they don't have all the flavors.

But anyway, that's gone now and I wasn't going to buy any more because calories. I decided (again) that I'm just going to drink hot tea this winter but last time I was at Walmart I saw they had Great Value salted caramel hot chocolate mix in the big round containers. (which turned out to be only half full. I know stuff settles but really?) I hesitated to buy it because I was like "Ewwww Great Value brand" but "salted caramel" won. I bought it and darn it, it's actually pretty good. Not up there with Land O' Lakes but really not bad and it mixes up as well as Land O' Lakes. It doesn't leave lumps that won't mix no matter how much you stir like some other cheap hot chocolate mixes.

I have some Chocolate Candy Cane tea from The Spice and Tea Exchange and it is heavenly but there's just something about hot cocoa - the creaminess of it - for which there is just no substitute. Someone on Twitter suggested Swiss Miss because it has on 60 calories per packet? Sorry, that makes sense but it also tastes like it only has 60 calories.

There's no fix for this. I will just have to consume less of something else and hope the weather warms up soon.

Hello February

It seems like everyone hates February. I often hear people say that the only good thing about is that it's short. It's true that we have had some of our worst weather ever in February but to me February feels sort of... I'm not sure this is the word I really want to use but sort of hopeful. This is because the days are getting noticeably longer. It's a little less dark. It's increasingly possible to imagine spring. (March, on the other hand, makes me impatient because it's usually still cold in March and it starts to feel like winter will never end.)

Saturday it was 80F. Today it's gray and cold, more like February is "supposed to be" but that's okay. I had Saturday and today it's still not freezing and the sun will come out and it will warm up again soon. February is okay.

I took the picture in this post a few minutes ago, between 8:15 and 8:30.

The Best Week of the Year

Well, we did that Christmas thing. We all got a lot of nice stuff and ate too much and spent the day just hanging out. It wasn't a white Christmas; in fact it was more like mid-spring. All in all, it was a really awesome day.

And someone got this for Christmas:

I wasn't sure about what kind of reaction this would get. A quilt isn't a typical gift for a 17 year old young man but he loved it. I also managed to finish another gift quilt that I had been working on for years so now I am between projects and that just feels wrong but at the same time I don't feel especially motivated to start anything else. At least I don't feel motivated by any one particular project but I will start something in a day or two. Right now there are books to be read and Mythbusters Mega-Marathon to be watched.

And speaking of Mythbusters, did you see that they're bringing it back with new people? There is going to be a "search" series first, to pick the next generation of Mythbusters. I have mixed feelings about this. I think the world really needs Mythbusters. We will never run out of myths to bust. But so much of the appeal of Mythbusters was the people so a new set of people? I don't know. I'm sure I will eventually get used to whoever ends up on the new Mythbusters but it will never be the same.

At the top I called this the best week of the year but is it really? The weeks before Christmas are pretty fun for me and there are other weeks of the year that are just as nice in their own ways but there's just something about this week when all of the busyness is done and there's nothing that has to get done in a hurry... And sometimes it can actually be sort of boring and, in some years, even a bit of a let-down but I suppose, like any other week, it's mostly whatever kind of week you choose to make it and this year I choose to make it about drinking tea, reading, and watching Mythbusters.

Winter Solstice Morning

I was sitting here at the computer yesterday morning and, looking out the window, I noticed that the world had a beautiful rose-gold glow. So I rushed to get my camera and went outside without taking time to put on a coat or proper shoes but, even though it took me less than a minute to get outside with a camera, the moment was already gone. So this is what I got. A little disappointing but still not bad?