Tuesday: first day

Another day, another new semester.  First days are the worst.  They're almost as bad as the last day.  To be fair though, it was pretty good as first days go.

Then I needed to go to Eagle Crest to give Isaac some medicine.  It was a bit annoying, but understandable.

I went back to Hope to have lunch with Natalie and continue working.  I may have taken a short nap too.  Being in the office during nap time may be a problem.

Rock climbing went well - I climbed a lot with Joshua and helped belay the team a little bit.

Isaac went to the doctor this evening for his toes.  There is a probable diagnosis for his weird colored toes which isn't a big deal, but also doesn't account for the itching.  We'll continue to monitor.

Monday: 2024 reading stats

Since I'm tired of talking about the chores I'm doing (which really aren't that interesting), I thought I'd talk about my 2024 reading stats instead.

I read (or listened to) 57 books*

This is also the same as 29,486 pages.

I read the most books in February, but the most pages in March.

The longest book was Iron Prince by Bryce O'Connor.  (This was also one of my favorites.)

My average rating was 3.64/5.  I only gave 6 books the five star rating.

*This doesn't count about three weeks worth of reading on Royal Road, which is an app that somewhat pre-publishes books.  I was loving the book series I was reading and wanted to continue it.  I enjoyed it for a bit, but then it started dragging and I gave up.  However, the content wasn't divided into books yet so I don't know how many books worth it would have been.

Sunday: the day before

Oh, the day before going back to school.  We didn't really have a long enough break - three more days would have been just right.  Enough time to get fully bored and actually ready to go back.

At the same time, I have a lot to do.  I really need to attempt to actually do work and not just have fun.  These errands don't run themselves.

Isaac started one of his crochet kits recently, but we decided that maybe starting on a dishrag would be a better choice first.  There's something about getting the motion down before trying to do it in a circle.

We also played the Axolotl game.  Snaxalotl enjoyed watching.

Saturday: visit

This afternoon Elizabeth and Jonathan stopped by for a little bit.  Elizabeth and I finished our puzzle while the boys played.  (It was good timing, because I have other puzzles from Christmas that I want to start!)

Other than that, it was a normal Saturday.  I still have a cold.  We got some work done.  I snow blowed.  The birds ate my suet but wouldn't move eight feet over to my special feeder.

Friday: a nice day

Today's plan was supposed to be similar to yesterday's, although we didn't have any errands to run.  However, we ended up playing a longer game and so I didn't get as much done.  The game was fun though!

We got more snow that I was expecting.  I was expecting less than an inch, but there's about five inches on the picnic table.

Thursday: stuff

Ben went back to work today, so the rest of us also (sort of) went back to work.  We got about half the Christmas stuff down, Isaac worked on some of his math, and I continued to work on the kitchen and laundry.

We also played some games, went rock climbing, and enjoyed some time without too many things.

Since it was the time after Isaac's birthday, he got to wear a birthday hat during dev team.  He was surprisingly excited about this and they made a nice amount of fuss.

Tuesday night: NYE

We said good-bye to my family and promptly started to flip the house for an evening party.  They left a little earlier than normal due to weather, which was rather sad.

Anyway, we weren't sure how long people were going to stay in the evening and neither were they.  Since it was potentially a longer time than normal, Ben came up with a few Lego challenges.  The first one was "build a firework".  We took most of our bins out of the stacks so it was easier for 13 people to move around and get the pieces they needed.

The next challenge was build in a polybag.  While it seemed impossible at first, several of us got it!  A few people got it in a sandwich bag, and a bunch that just didn't care and left pretty quickly.

Kids were getting tired so we decided not to do the third challenge; we're seeing them again in a few weeks anyway, so we'll do it then.