Happy New Year’s Eve!

I did laundry.

T. vomited more (these were not connected — he has a bucket now and knows how to use it).

I got my first Imperfect Foods order. I had some of the kale in an omelette for lunch.

R. cleared the driveway — really crappy sort of frozen / icy /wtf precipitated as we were driving home from the station last night and basically kept doing so for a while.

We went through the accumulated mail and packages last night, but more cards arrived today. Fun!

A. and I watched the last episode of Season 1 of The Mandalorian; I had carefully read lots of spoilers on the 27th before committing to watching it. It was fantastic! I loved it so much, and Cara Dune is probably one of my favorite women characters in all fiction everywhere. I mean, this could be something that will wear off, but right now I Love Her So Much.

I did catch up blogging — mostly things I had already written during the trip and waited until I came home to post.

The End of One Year and the Beginning of Another

I am fifty! That happened about six months ago, actually. But 2019 is 50 years after 1969.

A lot has happened since 1969. I will not recap it here.

For me, turning 50 was an excuse to continue the celebration of my 20 year anniversary of retiring. My retirement is now old enough to drink! And while my mixology project is technically over and done (that was a year theme from a previous year), I continue to discover really wonderful bouquets, aromas and flavors. I discovered Aberfeldy when flying to the Netherlands this summer, and was super happy it is not even that expensive and readily available here at home as well. Bell’s is also lovely, but not readily available. Oh well!

The year also provided a theme for designing drinks. I love arbitrary constraints! I worked steadily, and joyfully, to create drinks which combined peach and mint, and viewed any excuse to incorporate bitter orange liqueurs as a bonus.


My main takeaway from the year is that while mindfulness, acceptance and validation are really wonderful and useful, one should never underestimate the value of distracting people who have become hyperfocussed on something that is making them unhappy and that they realistically cannot do anything about. Or, you know, taking a nap until they wind down or find something else to talk about.

If you drink wine, I highly recommend Mount Veeder’s Cabernet Sauvignon. It is really tasty. I found it quite randomly at the California Grill at the Contemporary at Walt Disney World, some years ago when attempting to pick something to drink off an extensive wine list that I had zero familiarity with. I have a lot of Veeder ancestors and relatives. Not how I would recommend choosing wine! But serendipitously, it was great, and then later, it showed up at my local liquor store, Colonial Liquors, which I highly recommend if you are in Boston Metrowest. Tim is particularly helpful with special orders, and the whole staff is delightful. Tell them Purple sent you; it will add to the many moderately entertaining stories about me. I bought a case, after my brother-in-law, who actually knows quite a lot about wine, told me it was really good, and in terms of serving to guests, it has the delightful effect of both impressing people (hey, this is actually good) and being enjoyable (hey, this is actually good). The case is gone, my sister-in-law has since bought a case, and I am thinking I probably need to replenish my stock. With my luck, it will go the way of Domaine Drouhin, and move from being shockingly awesome and incredibly affordable, to shockingly awesome but dismayingly expensive. You know what? Don’t buy any Mount Veeder. Forget I mentioned it.