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This Christmas season was bittersweet. I couldn’t help but think that it’s the 1st Christmas without my boy Reese since 2007. Max is a great companion, however.

I had Thanksgiving dinner with Josh and Aaron again this year. We watched Disenchanted after we ate. We had ‘dim the lights’ at work the first part of that week (work from home, no meetings) and of I was off Thursday and Friday.

I was ready for Christmas this year. I listened to more Christmas music. I saw some holiday commercials on TV and at the movie theater that made me a little emotional.

We had a ‘dim the lights’ week at work the week between Christmas and my birthday. We had Christmas dinner at Josh and Aaron’s, but there was about 7 of us this time. We played video games and did our while elephant exchange. On Christmas Day we had Chinese Dinner and my friend Nir’s place. There were about 5 of us, 2 who I had never met before.

I started feeling a little sick late on Christmas day. I’ve been sick since. Covid tests have all been negative. When one things starts to feel better, something else starts to get worse. Overall, I’m better than I was at the beginning of the week. It sucks because this was my vacation week and I’ve spent it all isolated inside. I’m probably going to miss the NYE party I’m supposed to be going to tomorrow.

I didn’t get as much this year as normal. I still have 3 exchanges that were moved to January because of the hectic holiday season. What did I get?

• a rainbow-colored beanie
• several video games (purchased for myself)
• God is Disappointed in You by Mark Russell and Shannon Wheeler
• Arboretum board game
• Finding Me by Viola Davis
• some soaps and creams
• Nike gift card

Update: 12/31/2022
I realized that I usually give end of year thoughts in the Christmas post and not in a separate post like I thought. At the past few years I’ve done it that way. So I’m updating this.

2022 has been challenging, most because of death. Reese passed away and exactly 1 month later one of my oldest friends died. My aunt passed away last month and last week we lost a cousin (I think he’s a cousin, but I’m not sure. I have a large extended family). Some people who I knew of in the local community passed and of course some celebrities I liked did to.

It wasn’t all bad. I got a new job, which is an FTE position like what I was hoping to find this last year. I’ve made some progress and adjustments healthwise and I still have a long way to go. I started playing guitar again. I incorporated PDX Gaymers as a nonprofit. I’ve met tons of cool people. And so much more.

I’m a little bummed out that I’m too sick to go out tonight, but the rest will be good for me. I know that likely nothing will be different tomorrow, but I am looking forward to seeing what 2023 holds for me.

Thanksgiving weekend is ending. It was a good weekend.

I worked maybe an hour on Thanksgiving and 2 or 3 hours on Friday. Monday – Wednesday were pretty light at work as well. I’ll be glad when I’m working full-time again and don’t have to work on the last 2 days of that week at least.

I had Thanksgiving with my friends Aaron and Josh in Tigard, who I’ve been spending more and more time with lately. They ordered a pre-cooked dinner from New Seasons and all they had to do was warm it up. It was delicious. We played Xbox games and played a Star Wars themed card game that’s a lot like Exploding Kittens. I played games on my own at home before and after. The only thing I didn’t get around to doing was resurrecting my tradition of working out early on Thanksgiving day. At one point I thought I would work out at home after I got back from Aaron’s but I should have known that wouldn’t happen.

Friday – Sunday, I was at home pretty much the whole time playing video games, watching TV and movies, reading a book, and making sure Reese was okay. It was a nice, relaxing weekend for the most part.

I am fortunate.

Thanks to the pandemic, Thanksgiving was fairly uneventful.  I’m writing since I have a tradition of doing a Thanksgiving post every year. 

I worked half a day on Thanksgiving and Black Friday.  Since I don’t get any time paid vacation and Walmart doesn’t have paid holidays, most of my team was working that day.  But it was quiet for the most part. It was nice working without so many distractions.  I did a water change and got caught up on Star Trek: Discovery and The Mandalorian (2 eps each) during the extra time I had on those days.  I had pizza for dinner on Thanksgiving

I’m glad for the people who are already living with someone and didn’t have to spend it alone and got to have traditional meals.  They got to spend time with others.

And for those that didn’t heed the advice of the experts and stay home, I hope they don’t regret their actions.

Since I didn’t write about the election, I’ll say I’m thankful we’ll have a new president in less than 2 months.

The Happy/Hard Holidays are in full effect. I’m determined to enjoy them this year, but I’ll also be glad when they’re over.

Thanksgiving was fairly low key this year. Since most of my friends were planning to spend time with their families either out of state or in this area, I had resigned to spending Thanksgiving alone, working on the fish tanks and playing video games. A few days before Thanksgiving, however, my former co-worker Aaron invited me to spend Thanksgiving with his family. I was happy, because although I’m not big on holidays, I still think you shouldn’t spend Thanksgiving and Christmas alone if you don’t want to.

I had to do some last unexpected shopping for sweet potato pie ingredients. It ended up not turning out well. I didn’t start cooking until a couple of hours before I went to Aaron’s and I tried to make it without dairy products. I don’t know if that was the difference or not, but it seemed mushy and under cooked. Since I was running late anyway, I decided to just take a game to share. For dinner we had Aaron and his wife Marissa, Aaron’s brother and his wife and her daughter, and someone named Zeke who knew everybody but I was never sure how he was related to everyone. A couple of guests ended up not coming. The food and conversation was good and we played the game I brought, Anomia, and had fun. Everyone left shortly afterward.

After I left I kept up my Thanksgiving Day movie tradition by going to see Knives Out. It’s such a good movie, one of the best I’ve seen this year.

I’m glad I ended up celebrating Thanksgiving. Bring on Christmas! Even though I feel lonely at times and don’t have a job, I have a feeling this is going to be a fun holiday season. There won’t be someone around who hates the holidays dragging my mood down. I’m looking forward to Christmas and the New Year so much!

Thanksgiving weekend was last Thursday.  I was off from Wednesday afternoon until Sunday.  I worked from home Tuesday and Wednesday.  It was nice being out of the office for a while.

I was dreading the holiday because it looked like I was going to be spending it alone.  Then I went from having nowhere to go to having 2 places to go.  Xander and I went to our friends Tom & Stan’s potluck brunch and then to a friendsgiving hosting by one of Xander’s friends.  I baked a sweet potato pie for each one and Xander took bread.  He had dog walks and dog care in between.  It was a long day, but satisfying.

Now unto Christmas!

This past week was Thanksgiving.  After Hawaii I had said that I wouldn’t use any more vacation days this year, but I decided to take Wednesday off so I would have a 5-day break.  I was happy that for the 2^nd year in a row I got to have a Thanksgiving meal.  While we were camping in September, Alston and his girlfriend Stephanie asked me if I wanted to join them for Thanksgiving.  That was the last mention of it until the week before when I asked Alston if it was still on. Alston said that everybody else had backed out, but I was still welcome to come.

I looked online and got an idea for something healthy to cook: roasted Brussel sprouts.  I also made a sweet potato pie.  When I got to their place they had snacks ready while the other food was being prepared.  They made turkey, stuffing, corn bread, mashed potatoes and cranberry relish.  It was a delicious meal.  I wasn’t so keen on the Brussel sprouts, but I just didn’t like the taste.  We all ate so much.  It had trouble standing up straight for very long after the meal.  We ended up going for a walk afterwards.  According to the scale I put on 3 lbs that day.

I took my PS3 over there.  While we waited for the turkey to finish and after we ate, we played video games.  I had never played most of the games we played and I owned them.  I ended up letting Alston borrow my PS3 a few days later.

It was great spending Thanksgiving with friends since I couldn’t be with family.  Hopefully, I can keep the streak alive next year.

I haven’t really done much since I got back from Hawaii.  It’s been nice to be live a lazy and boring life.

A couple of weeks after I got back from Hawaii, I came home to find that Reese wasn’t his normal energetic self.  After a couple of trips to the emergency vet and a visit to the doctor that performed his surgery back in March (she works at a different place now), we figured that it was a return of his back problems, which will be a lifelong problem.  Although I was prepared to take him in for surgery again, it looks like bed rest has help greatly.  I started taking him on increasingly longer walks each week as the doctor instructed, but this week he started limping a little bit.  I started shortening his walks and he’s doing better.  He seems like his normal self most of the time.

I entered a weight loss competition at my gym and it started right before I left for Hawaii.  I used my 4 complimentary personal training sessions to learn a new workout routine.  Even though I had been working out, I was still very much out of shape.  My old workout wasn’t cutting it. My new workout was a “basic” workout, but it was very tough.  My trainer is honest and told me beforehand it wouldn’t be easy.  Over the next 4-5 weeks, I saw made some good progress, but it was getting too easy and I wasn’t loosing weight anymore.  I paid for 8 more sessions and I’m learning a more long-term workout routine.  It’s much much harder than what I was doing before.  Also, I’ve been eating better.  I’ve done pretty well with sticking to my food plan over the past couple of weeks.  So far, I’ve lost about 17 lbs.  I’m in 8th place in the weight loss competition.  At this point, I don’t really care about the competition anymore.  I just want to be healthier.

I’ve been trying to play video games as much as possible.  There are way too many games and not enough time to play them.  I’ve also been catching up on a lot of movies that missed.  Everyone should go see Birdman.

I went to “An Evening with Patrick Rothfuss” here in Portland about a month ago.  The Doubleclicks opened for him.  Most of it was a repeat of what I saw at P.A.X., but it was still fun.  I got an autographed copy of his new book.  I was too tired to stand in a long line to get a personalized autograph.  Maybe next time.

Work is the main thing that’s bothering me these days.  I’m just very bored and frustrated.  I’ve talked to the people that I need to talk to, but no one seems to want to change anything except me.  Hopefully, things will turn around soon.

That’s it for now.  I have to get a few things ready for Thanksgiving tomorrow.

I had a good Thanksgiving week here in Portland. I took the whole week off from work. I decided to take the week off not long after I was hired in June and realized how many vacation days I would have to use by the end of the year or lose them. I’m taking another week off between Christmas and New Year’s.

The week was fun even though I was busy a lot. I cleaned up on the insides, raked the leaves the leaves on the outside, and ran a lot of errands. I watched a lot of TV (finally caught up after getting behind during Voodoo Fest), and played a lot of video games. On Thanksgiving Day, I went to a potluck that I found out about in a local gaming group that I’m in. All of those people who came know each other from a different group, so it was a little awkward being the only one who didn’t already know people there. It was still fun though. I think it was first Thanksgiving celebration since 2007. Everyone loved the potato salad I made. It was the first time I’d tried making it. I used a dish my mom used to always use for potato salad. She gave it to me when I got my first apartment in college. I held on to it, but had never used it until Thanksgiving. On Black Friday, I had the Pearl Jam concert, which was the highlight of the week.

I’m going back to work tomorrow refreshed.

I had a pretty good Thanksgiving break. I really needed that. For the first time in a while I had a weekend that didn’t fly by way too fast, but that’s probably because it was over twice as long as normal.

This was only the 3rd Thanksgiving that I can remember where I didn’t go back to Jackson. I was kind of glad when I saw how many people on Twitter were stressing out over cooking and relatives and what not. Also, I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of boarding the dog somewhere. I wish we had some real kennels around here. It’s good to spend a break doing only what I wanted to do. I even went an entire day without seeing another human being.

What did I do?

• caught up on all the stuff on my DVR
• finished the Babylon 5 re-watch that I started last year
• did some shopping and bought stuff for me and the dog
• played video games

After 3 more weeks of work, I get a 2 week break. I’m ready for another break.