Decorations

I decorated my house over the weekend, and now I have loads of flashing Christmas lights both inside and outside my home.  But since you can't see my house from the road, why do I bother with the outdoor lights?  Nobody can see it apart from me, and my immediate neighbors.  Which is a shame, because I think my lights look good as they cycle through the different sequences.  Though ideally I would put up more hanging hooks.  I'm waiting until we get some windy weather, and expecting a lot of my lights that are currently precariously balanced on door and window frames to quickly come down.  Perhaps I didn't put them up as well as I could have.  Certainly the hummingbirds didn't appreciate the invasion of their space - they were making a hell of a racket as I was putting up the lights near the feeder.     

Good News, Bad News

We got a little pre-Christmas bonus from work today - a $150 Amazon voucher.  I think everyone in the Seattle office got one - this was a portion of the Christmas party budget split between about 200 employees, since there is no party this year!  That was the good news.  However, there were also a limited number of bigger prizes raffled off - think weekend breaks, an Apple Watch, etc.  And the bad news was I didn't win anything in the raffle.  No surprises there, I have an uncanny ability to never win anything in matters of chance.  But it was made worse by the fact that 2 colleagues in my group, including my manager, did win.  What did I ever do to Lady Luck for her to treat me this way?  This is not an isolated incident.    

Coyote Sighting

I woke up this morning and opened my curtains, and was quite surprised to see a coyote out of my bedroom window!  Or more accurately, the rear end of what looked like a dog (though it was probably a coyote) disappearing into the undergrowth in my back yard.  So, once again, no time to retrieve my phone and get a photo.  But wait, perhaps my trail camera caught the coyote.  But a quick check, but nothing captured on the camera apart from me (no sign of the raccoons for several weeks now).  If I had the camera pointing towards the other hummingbird feeder, I think perhaps I might have caught the coyote on film.  So that is kind of annoying.  Hopefully I'll get it one day.    

Land of the Free

This somehow encapsulates America.  There was yet another school mass shooting event in Michigan recently, where 4 teenagers died.  And then a few days later, a US congressman posted the following photo on Twitter:

 Along with the caption: "Merry Christmas! ps. Santa, please bring ammo".  I don't need to tell you which political party this congressman belongs to.  Stay classy America.

Slippery Slope

For those who thought my decision to cancel my trip was a bit hasty and premature, well perhaps I got some karma today.  Because we've had so much rain recently - officially the wettest fall (autumn) in Seattle history - my driveway has sprouted a lot of moss.  And when it is wet, the driveway becomes treacherously slippery on this moss.  As I discovered this morning, as I went down the driveway to retrieve my garbage cans (dustbins) from the bottom of my driveway I slipped and fell down in a very inelegant way.  Fortunately I was still hidden from the road, so no one got to see my embarrassment.  But the result wasn't good.  An extremely muddied up pair of jeans, but more worryingly a nagging pain behind my right knee.  I hope the pain is temporary, my movement doesn't seem limited, so my fear that I've done something untoward to my knee ligaments during the act of falling is hopefully unfounded.  Nonetheless not good, especially when I value my mobility so highly.  Next time I'll make sure I walk down the tire tracks where the moss seems less prevalent, rather than the middle of the driveway.  I've also got my landlord on the case when I told him about my accident - and he was already scraping the moss away today with some garden tools.  I really just want him to coat the driveway with chemicals and kill all the moss that way.        

A Tough Decision

I've had to make a difficult decision today, and I'm sad to say that I've canceled my trip back to the UK.  With the number of new travel restrictions introduced in the last few weeks, both on the US and UK ends, and the likelihood of further restrictions in the upcoming weeks, I've decided the risks are too great.  There's too many things that could wrong with this trip, and the increasing expense and inconvenience of constant COVID testing is too much.  Not to say a new and dangerous variant running rampant globally.  Although it wasn't announced today, the prospect of having to self-isolate when I return to the US is something I'm not prepared to do - and it's something that the government here have considered, and will continue to consider when the number of cases of omicron inevitably multiply.  The timing of this new variant couldn't be worse.  Of course I feel terrible about this decision, it's going to make some people upset - not least my Mum and my nephew and niece - and the prospect of another lonely Christmas is not one I'm looking forward to.  I think the only people happy with this decision will be work - because I've already been asked numerous times whether I'd be able to work remotely from the UK during my "vacation".  I think I'm still going to take the time off, but I hope I can make it back to the UK in 2022 when the situation is better, and spend some better quality time with my family and friends.

Song of the Week #86

We're slowing it down this week for some classic 80's smooth jazz.  Just what I need, as my stress levels are high because it appears that the US is going to announce further travel restrictions tomorrow - one of the likely restrictions, a negative PCR test within 24 hours of departure to the US, could prove a particularly expensive and logistical nightmare.  Any sort of required quarantine could jeopardize my entire trip.