Welcome back to the Virtual Advent Tour!

Day 2 will take us to The Ravell’d Sleave, where Bridget has a post for us about honoring tradition.

We’ll see you back here tomorrow!

Want to join in the Virtual Advent Tour fun? Leave me a comment and I can help you get signed up!

Welcome to this year’s Virtual Advent Tour!

If you stop by my blog every morning (~6 a.m. EST) between now and Christmas, much like a traditional Advent calendar, you’ll find there’s a door to open for a holiday scene of some sort. Many of them will be links to other folks’ blogs, where they’ll share a bit of holiday fun with you — maybe something about how they celebrate Christmas or their winter holiday of choice or a selection of favorite holiday movies or the like — and the rest will be shared here. We hope you enjoy them, and welcome your participation, should you want to join in the fun. You can find signups here, or leave me a note in the comments.

Without further ado, let me send you off to your Dec. 1 Virtual Advent Tour destination: Compassionknit, where kathy b has some suggestions for easy holiday cooking for you.

And I’ll see you back here tomorrow.

This shot is through the front window of my folks’ place. They get some very pretty sunsets.

The sun has set on Thanksgiving, and we’re moving on to Christmas. My parents picked out their trees today, and I’ll go see if I can find one tomorrow.

The Virtual Advent Tour kicks off tomorrow. Have you signed up for a date yet? We’d love to have you join us!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Here are three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The drive home to Connecticut (which Rudi did most of) was pretty uneventful Wednesday night. We got a late start, but the roads were mostly clear.

2. Corey was very snuggly this week after my absence and his night on his own.

3. Our table was full, and we got to talk to the most important people who were absent from it today. We have roofs over our heads and a way to pay for necessities and a few luxuries. We are healthy. And even if the country is not currently functioning the way most of us would like it to, we live in relative peace and can work to make our government better in the future.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Sign-ups are open for the Virtual Advent Tour, which starts Sunday. We’d love to have you take part!

It’s been nearly three months since I started this new job, and I’m finding it a struggle to achieve the work-life balance that’s previously been mostly effortless for me. While I haven’t missed a volleyball game yet (yay, physical activity!), my knitting and recreational reading have been at all-time lows.

With only 13 more days in the office this year, I don’t foresee making any radical changes before the holidays, but I do think I could probably make some incremental changes:

T’is the season for Christmas movies, which do not require much brain power. Sock knitting also does not require much brain power and I think if I reach for one of my socks-in-progress, rather than my phone first when we start up a film, I will actually stick with it long enough to make some noticeable progress.

I also think that if I set aside 15 minutes when I get home to decompress with a book I’ll be a happier camper. Finally, I need to finish The Library Book, because it’s detracting from all the lovely fiction I want to read, so I’ll make that a priority while I’m in Connecticut for the holiday weekend.

If nothing else, the new job is making me good at developing actionable plans for accomplishing tasks, right?

Apparently, I took a lot of photos of what I was eating while I was traveling for work last week. Admittedly, I did have some pretty awesome meals in both Kansas City and NYC.

In Kansas City, we ate barbecue in a gas station, Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que. I had fries and a barbecued portobello mushroom sandwich (not seen here):

The next morning we had breakfast at Donutology, where they offered both regular and gluten-free doughnuts. I ate two hot glazed doughnuts (move over Krispy Kreme) and took an apple fritter to go (which was a great idea, since it later became my supper).

In New York City, I had several excellent lunches — pho and Indian — and some amazing dinners — veggie burgers (Two Tablespoons) and Ukranian food (Veselka).

We found a coffeehouse near our hotel (Black Cat LES), where we had a late teatime while waiting for my friend to join us after work.

I also ate Japanese artisanal toast (mine is cream cheese and jam, while Rudi’s is red bean paste):

We also ate more yuppie doughnuts, bought a bonfire bar (a cookie bar with pretzels and marshmallows, at the very least), and wrapped up the day with slices from Joe’s Pizza, a classic to-go joint:

Thanks for joining me for some terrific meals!