here we go again.

It's the Monday after the holidays, and I'm feeling refreshed.  It was not the holiday season I thought it would be-- this was the first year since medical school I've had Christmas off, and I was super looking forward to heading back East, but COVID clearly had other plans. 

Between the pandemic and an injury B is recovering from, we laid pretty low-- catching up on some reading, doing a little bit of research, watching a movie, cooking. We snuck in one easy weekend of skiing at Kirkwood and a couple of short hikes. Was it my perfect holiday? No, but we have our health and jobs and food and a place to live, and for that, I am grateful and refreshed.

happiest place

never. gets. old. 

Plus, it feels SO GOOD to write 2021 in my planner! NEW YEAR!

Reading:
-I finished Malignant, making it my first of 2021. To be frank, I was a little disappointed-- the author has a podcast that I adore, but much of the book felt like rehashing of ideas that had already been explored on the pod. I may not be intended audience.
-Started Bel Canto, making it my first fiction for 2021! Lately I've been gravitating toward older novels("older" meaning "I meant to read this years ago and never did," not actual classics.) I'll reserve judgement until I finish it. 

Watching:
-Soul! Pixar, you have my heart. 

Listening
-A Promised Land. Should this have gone in the "Reading" category? Perhaps. It's a long one, so this will be on the list for a while. 
-"First Arabesque", again. Found some stillness and played piano. It was nice. 

Cooking:
-I made what I've dubbed "Ginger No-Snaps" from this insanely popular recipe, and holy smokes! They were good. As in, no-time-for-a-photo, I-need-to-give-these-away-or-else-I'll-eat-them-all good. I may make more to eat/give--there's a few tweaks I'd be interested in trying, too (adding orange zest, adding rum, adding a glaze....).
-A pizza pile! My first foray into pizza making was more pizza flop than pizza pie. I used Jim Lahey's dough recipe (as modified by smitten kitchen), which sounds like it could do no wrong, and yet...sticky, dense, thick dough. I will try again. 

the pizza pile!

take 3 turned out a little better looking, but was still doughy and wrong. 

Working:
-I tried to use some of my holiday downtime to make some progress on a few longer-term projects. I finally started writing a population science AML paper that, to be frank, should have been written 2 months ago. The Intro/Methods/Results/Tables/Figures (aka, the easy parts) are all blissfully done, so now it's just putting it all into context and writing a Discussion (aka, the not-easy parts). Hoping to crank this out soon.
-I need to set aside sometime to analyze some data for lab. I have a feeling trying to balance older projects that are close to being done (or at least, closer to being done than they are to being started) with new projects is going to be a theme of 2021. Hopefully I'll stay refreshed, motivated, and boxes will keep getting checked. 

my stocking-stuffer knows me well :)