Sidra

I spent much of the morning walking to the Walk In Centre in the city, and then walking back. The Centre itself was emptier than I'd ever seen it before—just four people in front of me, and when I left, there was one person who looked as if she was waiting for a lift home.

Why, you are agog to know, why did I attend the walk-in centre? Because in the middle of the night I woke up literally gasping for breath. It felt as though my entire throat was clogged with something, and trying to haul in breaths resulted in little, noisy gasps and not very much air at all. Horrible sensation. Frightening. Anyway. I emerged with a prescription for penicillin to attack the infection in my upper airway and (possibly) right lung. Ick. Weird thing is how mostly-normal I feel during the day!

One thing it was really nice to feel, again, was how pleasant it is to be able to walk. I walked to the centre, sat for a few minutes, walked back home, nipped into the house to go to the loo, and continued on up the road to the pharmacy for my prescription, bought a bagful of stuff in Aldi, and walked home, and my hips are fine. Back before I got arthritis, I never thought about how good it feels to be able to walk, but it does, it really does.

When I wandered into Jarrolds, Nsync were wishing me a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, which was nice.

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We went to the post office yesterday to send a few small parcels and a bunch of cards abroad.
Yikes.

Might not be doing that next year.

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Argh. Beast is working on his new chorus song, listening to the teach track and singing along. Over and over and over.

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Can anyone think of some cheerful and widely known Christmas songs? I have a few in mind, but they're ones my chorus has already had and has discarded. We need a cheerful number to counteract In the Bleak Midwinter, I'll Be Home for Christmas, and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

Beast is out this morning for a Leads rehearsal.

So I took myself up the road for breakfast—an excellent bacon sandwich with coffee and orange juice. I am not sure why the bacon sandwich is accompanied by a pot of Doritos, but they are appreciated.

Along the road is a two-storey inflatable Father Christmas. Made me smile.

A double decker came down the road as I walked up it. Instead of the usual bus number and destination, the LED display on the front read Merry Christmas from [Bus company], with a snowman. This made me grin. No idea what manner of bus it was, as the usual ones that come down this road are single deckers.

And after breakfast, when I had wandered into Aldi for some mange touts and some chocolate to augment my nephew's Christmas gift, I found a Biggles omnibus on the charity table. So I now own four Biggles books in one giant volume. I first encountered Biggles when visiting my Nana as a child: for some reason she owned Spitfire Parade, a collection which may for all I know have been short stories*. After that I was hooked and acquired many more, though I gave them away long ago. Still. Biggles! To read! Possibly. When I have finished my Yuletide story.

* Edit: it was!

Beast and I were watching 'Madam President' earlier today, and they mentioned having a warship offload a bunch of refugees to a Camp in New Mexico.

"Does New Mexico have a coastline?" said I, dubiously.

It does not. Beast and I had a brief argument on this point, as he was maintaining that Mexico has two coastlines, which it does, but New Mexico? Not the same thing.

So... warship? I mean, how?

(I realise this is an old reference. We are watching on DVDs loaned by Bun. (Still, I'm kinda wondering why none of the Americans in the room where it was made noticed the problem. Or is there a known pipeline from the Atlantic—or the Gulf of wherever—to New Mexico? (Okay now I am imagining a couple of hundred refugees trekking miserably through an actual pipeline, a less glamorous Anatevka march.)))

It was Long-Tailed Tits day today! There were about eight of them—they are very hard to count—at the feeders today. Very sociable diners, all clustering together. So cute!

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Have been trying to help our Boy prep for a job interview again. He has many good examples of where he has been an Excellent and Useful employee, but he is not at all fluent at expressing them.

*fingers crossed*

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Concert last night at one of the localmost churches, which is a very pleasant place in which to sing. We sounded good. It was nice.

Hello, friends! It's about to be December again, and you know what that means: the fact I am posting this actually before December 1 means karzilla reminded me about the existence of linear time again. Wait, no -- well, yes, but also -- okay, look, let me back up and start again: it's almost December, and that means it's time for our annual December holiday points bonus.

The standard explanation: For the entire month of December, all orders made in the Shop of points and paid time, either for you or as a gift for a friend, will have 10% of your completed cart total sent to you in points when you finish the transaction. For instance, if you buy an order of 12 months of paid time for $35 (350 points), you'll get 35 points when the order is complete, to use on a future purchase.

( The fine print and much more behind this cut! )

Thank you, in short, for being the best possible users any social media site could possibly ever hope for. I'm probably in danger of crossing the Sappiness Line if I haven't already, but you all make everything worth it.

On behalf of Mark, Jen, Robby, and our team of awesome volunteers, and to each and every one of you, whether you've been with us on this wild ride since the beginning or just signed up last week, I'm wishing you all a very happy set of end-of-year holidays, whichever ones you celebrate, and hoping for all of you that your 2026 is full of kindness, determination, empathy, and a hell of a lot more luck than we've all had lately. Let's go.