Santa Claus Has Left Town

Christmas is over now, even if traditionally there's more than a week of it left. I've noticed that some promotions using the idea of Twelve Days of Christmas use the twelve days BEFORE the twenty-fifth, rather than after. Last week, we went to Tavie's new apartment in the evening and watched a bunch of stuff, some of which I reviewed in my big Christmas media post. She gave me a 3D printed Tin Woodman in Return to Oz style.We went to Beth's mom's house on Thursday night after work, and that week we did our annual viewing of Home Alone. While I don't think either of us would consider that a great movie, it's not a hate-watch either. On Christmas Eve, Dorothea came over, and we watched Christmas Evil and Silent Night, Deadly Night. Beth and I had already seen those (twice in the former case), but Dorothea hadn't. It was surprisingly warm on Christmas Day, which was good in a way because I really don't like getting bundled up to go out, but it can't be good for the plants. Presents I received included a book of They Might Be Giants setlists, a guitar book of country songs, the games Legend of Legacy for DS and I Am Setsuna for Switch, a stuffed Buzzy Beetle and Boom Boom, two Mario T-shirts and a Wizard of Oz one, the Mountain Goats' Ghana, and Molly Crabapple's Drawing Blood.
Most of the stuff I bought for Beth hasn't arrived yet, but I did give her Yoshi's Crafted World, since she really liked Woolly World.

I've always been somewhat of a last-minute shopper, and since I don't know when I'll be able to give presents to my family, I'm delaying even more on those. I've also been trying to not use Amazon for everything, but that's kind of difficult. I mean, there have been albums I tried to buy directly from the band's or label's site, and they just directed me back to Amazon. Anyway, we're back in Brooklyn now.


I played the Toy Day event in Animal Crossing on Friday, which I don't think I'd done before in any version of the game. There's a reindeer named Jingle who shows up and asks you to deliver presents for him, and there's also a toy exchange between neighbors. I think I accidentally gave one of them the same present he gave me, but that's kind of difficult to avoid without a spreadsheet or something, and most of the gifts given are from among the same few toys anyway. I assume Toy Day is a way to acknowledge Christmas without dealing with the religious aspects. Even Santa doesn't actually appear, although Jingle says he works for him.

It must suck when your birthday is also your busiest day of the year.
You can get items from Nook Shopping related to a lot of holidays that aren't otherwise mentioned, including some exclusive to Japan. AC is a game that I kind of feel I should play at least a few times a week, and while that's good in a way, it also means there are a bunch of games that I want to play and still haven't. Last week, I tried to fight the Ice Vellumental in Paper Mario: The Origami King and got clobbered. I have more idea how to proceed next time I try, but those timed puzzles are way more frustrating than anything in AC. So far, I've found the Vellumental battles way harder than the ones with the Legion of Stationery. I've watched a few video game playthroughs online, and I can't help feeling a little guilty that I didn't just play them, even though some of them are difficult to come by and I don't think I'd be very good at them. But it's not like I'm trying to get credit for playing them, more to understand the world-building each game adds. Still, I wish I had more time and energy to devote to actually playing games.

I'm still taking guitar lessons, and Beth bought a book of Christmas songs for me a few weeks ago, and trying them out has been fun. The book includes some more recent stuff that I didn't try playing, including something from The Polar Express and another called "Text Me Merry Christmas," which sounds like a pretty low bar. I mean, I do that with some people, but I'm not trying to get with them. Apparently the song was co-written by the late Adam Schlesinger (continuing the tradition of Christmas songs by Jewish writers) and Kristen Bell sings on it, which makes it seem more legitimate than the title suggests. Beth also said that I should try Duolingo, so I've started with Greek, I guess mostly because I'm a fan of Greek mythology. Of course. classical Greek is different from modern Greek, but apparently not AS different as most languages are from their counterparts over 2000 years ago. But I do remember that the letter psi is the one that looks like a trident, the symbol of Poseidon; and the word for water is nero, like Nereids. I suppose there's no connection to the Roman Emperor of that name; I think "nero" in Latin might mean "black." Then again, in Revelation, the beast associated with Nero is said to have come out of the sea, so who knows? The Duolingo format is kind of weird, because it just jumps right in with translating sentences, admittedly very easy ones at first, but when I took languages in school they'd always start with the basics. There was no overview on verb conjugation, so when that's something I have to do, I often mess it up.