We just barely beat the new Robot Rampage room at Trapped Puzzle Rooms in St. Paul. 59m 36s. Whew! It was a fun room! Room 38!
We had a fabulous hike in the snow at Wood-Rill SNA today.
Family selfie on my big birthday! 5️⃣0️⃣
The Big 5 O Song!
Tammy surprised me with an amazing gift for my 50th Birthday today — my very own song! A full on rock song for me featuring the family. I love it! It is on YouTube but is also published on Apple Music and Spotify!
Song by Songlorious! 🎶
My daughter has a great way of framing my big birthday! 🤣
Jamie v5.0.0
Today I turn fifty! 🎉
I don’t find that I have a lot of profundity to share. But here are some thoughts…
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I have never regretted being generous.
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Most things are much more “in the middle” than I used to think. Right and wrong. True and false. Binary things. Often things are not that simple.
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Our time is finite. And despite the saying “time is money”, it isn’t. You have control over money. You have no control over time being spent, only how it is spent.
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Many things are positioned is this or that, when they can easily be this and that.
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I’m amazed at how much Buddhism got right so very long ago about attention, being present, mindfulness.
Wicky Thing Tealights
Yesterday I made more 12oz candles, as well as some tealight candles. After realizing that the small tealights needed to be on a towel to slow down cooling they came out great. Today I did a burn test on four of them. The wood wick still gives a great crackling sound, even at the small size. Burn time is impressive at 5 hours or more. Good scent throw too for such a small candle.
I’ll keep a number of these around because you always have little bits of extra wax when making candles and having tealights to fill up would be a great way to use that.
We made it 662 days into the pandemic before having a confirmed COVID-19 exposure. We are all vaccinated and three of us are boosted. 🤞🦠
Bummer for me that it happened the day before my birthday. 😬
New reported Covid-19 cases via The New York Times. I wonder what this Omicron spike would like like without vaccines. The slope of that climb is incredible.
First attempt at making tealight candles along with some regular Wicky Thing candles. Requires precision for 0.5 oz pour. Towel under the tealights is to slow down cooling. First ones I let sit on counter and the wax tunneled as it cooled too fast. 🕯
Blokus is another New Years Eve tradition. Tyler (Blue) won this year with just 4 points left. Tammy (Green) with 8, Jamie (Red) with 11, and Mazie (Yellow) at 21.
Every New Years Eve we play Clue and for the first time in memory I won! On my very first turn I guessed Mustard, Knife, Lounge and randomly hit both the weapon and room. I got it down to two people and then had to guess because I thought someone else would get it. 🏆
Shelfie of next round of books my book club is reading: The Blocksize War (my pick), Empire of Pain, The Florentines paired with Aeschylus I (only first section), Addiction by Design, and Mni Sota Makoce. I’m looking forward to all of them! 📚
Time for our traditional New Years Eve fondue dinner.
Movie tonight was Free Guy and it was pretty fun! The various riffs on gamer culture were all really funny. Tammy’s pick. 🍿
Today is Lucky’s 2nd birthday! She is officially no longer a puppy. Mazie and I took her on a nice, cold, snowy walk and she loved it. She got a lot of treats, and much extra attention today.
Horse at sunset.
Today’s board game was Settlers of Catan! We messed up the rules more than a few times, and the game took a long time to wrap up, but still liked it. Tyler’s pick. Mazie won.
Totally enjoyed In The Heights tonight. Great movie and incredible performances. Wow. My movie pick. 🍿
Tonight’s board game was Photosynthesis. Mazie’s pick, and she won with a good lead! 🌳
