Welp, it's just me and Baby Yoda this year. My TV is being a little bitch as usual, but at least the parade is on YouTube this year if the TV keels over. So far it is working...ish...well enough,...

Notable moments of the parade:
* Hamilton! God, I think I had a crush on all three Schuyler sisters in this one. Gorgeous. I liked "And Peggy" in this one and I love Angelica's braids in her hair. So cute, it makes me want to try it except my hair's so fucking thin I would just look bald.
* I liked the "JennieO" gold bling turkey.
* What was with the giant bowling setup?
* How many people are yelling "Copaganda!" at both police being in the parade and Chase from Paw Patrol?
* On the Paw Patrol movie: "....and it's coming to theaters....next summer."
* I've spotted two lobsters in this parade so far.
* It took until 2020 to get the first female designed balloon in the parade?!?!
* THERE IS AN ENTIRE BALLOON OF THE YOUNG ROCK. WTF.
* OMG PATTI LABELLE'S NAILS. Can the woman do ANYTHING with those nails so long? Gorgeous color but those are freaking TALONS you could slash necks with!
* From the commercials: Why would you need a machine that replaces your goldfish with another one? Never mind!

Dog show notes:
* I love the lady judge with the sparkly bling mask.
* BICHON SO CUUUUTE
* That little brown fluffy dog I forget the name of, SO CUUUUUUUTE
* HAVAENESE MOP SO CUUUUUTE. And it's named MOOSE!
* LITERAL MOP DOGS
* "The dog is named "Fly Me To The Moon" and it's call name is Buzz, not sure if it's Buzz Aldrin or Buzz Lightyear..."
* And the Pembroke Welsh Corgi is the dead last to be show in the show!
* Another dog is "Love That Jimmy Fallon" for its goofy personality.
* I love the kid handler. So cute, so professional.
* This photo of the dudes posing with the literal mop dog.... LOL
* THEY DIDN'T EVEN SHOW THE CORGI AGAIN I AM MAD.....er, the Pembroke one, anyway. They showed the Cardigan, but they always seem very odd to me.
* They never pick the cutest dog.

I got a group phone call from my work team (Hope and Dianna), which was a delight. We talked about alcohol. Also Hope' to-go dinner order disappeared from the store for a while and she and her boyfriend were debating about whether or not they'd come off as an angry black man (him) or Karen (her), har. Eventually the food was found, though.

I saw this video and it delighted me very much. I totally agree with it. Like I'll eat the homemade if it's on the table, but I totally prefer the weird ol' jelly.

I almost broke my disposal today. I made some kind of pasta salad last night that ended up with noodles stuck to the bottom, left it to soak, then forgot and put them down the sink and then it would run, but then barfed water back up. I asked Mom/Roger and he said to leave it alone for awhile, and it did drain on its own eventually. Yaaaaaaaaaaay for not having to call anyone for help on this.

I decided to start working on that whole patchwork sweater idea, sorting out the yarn and starting to make 4x4 squares.

At 2, per finding out that group calls exist, we called Sandy, our family friend in Montana (who used to date my dad yonks ago). She is in Montana and is a 'winter person." Quotes from her:

* "It's really nice out, it's 30 degrees. I have shorts on." (Indoors)
* "It's 33 but feels like 26."
* On what I think is her daughter-in-law? "I love her dearly, but she's an airhead." "She can't shuffle a deck of cards. She's so brilliant and so common sense stupid."
* On COVID: "I don't really care if I get it, but I don't want to choke to death, so if I come down with it, I told Tony to put a pillow over my head."
* "Well, who's going to make a pass at a girl with a rifle on her shoulder?"
* On her husband: "He's getting so old. I'm glad I'm not."
* On acting: "I can do something like that, I can bullshit anybody."
* On her granddaughter: "She's taking trigonometry and all that crap... she says it's like sixth grade math."
* On her grandson: "That kid won't open a book, he's a (last name redacted) to the core."
* "The only guy I couldn't beat the shit out of, I married. I've always been tougher than crap."
* Me: "Did you beat up Dad?" "...I could have if I wanted to. He wasn't the kind you beat the shit out of though." (Then she proceeded to say her favorite thing about him was his car.)
* On how she used to eat deer: "I never ate beef until I went to a prom."
* "You know, it's tough looking like a girl. I never done it."
* "He's never worked, how would he know, excuse me, that's my asshole speaking." -on her shitty son-in-law. I gather one of his exes is a meth addict too.
* "I gotta go, I got 12 minutes to look like a girl."
* At one point (after grumbling about her son-in-law for awhile), she said something like "Don't get married, Jennifer" and I was all "Yeah, that's never happening and it's been sixteen years since I had a boyfriend."

Random moment: I apparently submitted something or other to a website poll (I don't really recall, I'm guessing that's what I did?) and I was reading an article and then was all, "Hey wait, this sounds like something I said...." Yup, that was me. Hah.

I attempted to text some folks, heard back from others such as my old boss and Loretta, who was spending 4 hours making turkey and all kinds of food, damn. Attempted to text the theater people I've been missing. Briefly heard back from Robert and Redhead Sarah and that was about it. (Asked about Sarah's kids, no response. SIGH.) As for Scott...I'll just cover it at the bottom.

I took photos of my Thanksgiving food before prepping (hah) and after, also took pictures of Baby Yoda and my new carton of eggs, even hard-boiling one to attempt to take a picture of him eating it. This did not go so well with his stiff little hands, but oh well.

At 3, I went to that Zoom reading of the script of Monty Python and the Holy Grail that I got invited to. We had six originally and then someone had to bail early on, but we utilized the Acme Theater method of numbering people off and assigning parts as their number came up and it worked well for 30+ parts. I got to play Arthur, which was fun, and also Dennis ("Help, help, I'm being repressed!") at the same time. We all agreed that it was fun and maybe do it again for Christmas. I hope so. I don't have screenplay access but others do.

After that, I made myself Thanksgiving dinner, which took 20 minutes and consisted of the following:
(a) HungryMan turkey and mashed potatoes, various veg and "compote" (whatever that is), basically to have a token amount of turkey on the menu. I honestly don't give a shit about turkey off the fresh bird, but tend to think that literally any kind of processed turkey is tastier, so.... that was 10 minutes.
(b) Made Stove Top stuffing, five minutes.
(c) Opened cans of corn and cranberry sauce
(d) Cut up apples, cut up that hard boiled egg, and threw that into the stuffing. Threw in bacon bits, honey mustard dressing, fried onions and mushrooms.
(c) Opened up a tiny sparkling cider bottle since that's what I got from the store, with wine for later.
(f) Tiny frozen cheesecake for dessert.
This is officially waaaaaaaaay too much food than I would ever make eating by myself, so like most others I will have leftovers, at least of the sides. It was pretty good, actually.

After that, it was time for a terrible Netflix Christmas movie, so let's watch Christmas Chronicles, Part 2, since I barely remember Part 1!

Christmas Chronicles, Part 2: I am tired of all the whining about how it's horrible to be in a tropical paradise at Christmas. I have BEEN to a tropical paradise during the Christmas season, and you know what? IT WAS AWESOME. Two thumbs up, highly recommend.

Anyway: instead of making snarky one-liners, I'm just gonna recap this:

Kate and her brother are in Cancun with mom, mom's new boyfriend, and mom's boyfriend's son Jack, a friendly but timid/allergic fellow. Kate is pouting about not being in snow for the holidays, but her brother is just fine. Kate decides to change her Christmas wish from an electric scooter to getting to go home, and decides to sneak out back to the airport while everyone else is visiting Mayan runes. (Except for Jack, who decides to follow her.) However, she falls into the trap laid by a strange pouting teenager driving a golf cart who activates a wormhole that spits them into the North Pole, forcing Santa to rescue them.

This is all a plot by Belsnickel*, a former elf who turned into a cranky prankster egotist, broke all the Elf Code rules, and apparently turned into a human because of that. Belsnickel needed a True Believer to get through the barrier around the North Pole so he could get his revenge. But seriously, he like, spraypainted the sleigh and used whoopee cushions, it...could be worse?

* Where he got this name when all the other elves have short names like Hugg, I do not know.

I'm gonna note that they had some bucks in this movie for all the special effects and cute elf critters. Then they literally have some kind of Katamari Damacy Bowling For Elves scene. Har. And then there's the "Who Let The Dogs Out" DJ party scene...

Anyway, Belsnickel, a human-hater, somehow uses some poison powder to turn all the elves into jerks and make the reindeer sick, so he can steal the Star of Bethlehem, take it to the South Pole, and stop aging while he figures out how to undo his curse. To which Mrs. Claus is all "so come home and stop acting like a jerk" and Belsnickel is all NOPE. So he gets the star and everyone delegates: Mrs. Claus works on an antidote, Jack is sent out to the woods to look for an ingredient for it, and Kate and Santa fly to Turkey to see if they can get a replacement star from the original elves he hung out with back in 312 BC.*

* Note: Santa was a bishop...so how's he married now? HMMMMMMMMMMMM.
Jack is armed for bear with two cookies from Mrs. C.: "Okay, which one gives you courage and which one explodes?" LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. IT'S RED WIRE AND BLUE WIRE WITH COOKIES!!!!!!

So Santa and Kate end up stranded at the Boston Airport in 1990 because "Only Belsnickel would power a time capsule with Triple A's." Kate goes to buy batteries at the gift shop and exactly what I thought was going to happen happens: they don't think her money is real. While Kate gets busted(?), Santa is off having a dance number in the airport with a pissed off airport employee. Let me guess, this cute boy she's hanging out with in the airport is probably her dead dad or something, 1990 version. He's totally fine with visiting his grandparents in Florida in case they die, and recognizes another True Believer. Oh yeah, it's her dad. As Kate and Santa depart, he's all "Note to self: bring a video camera wherever you go." Not that I super remember 1990 well, but was that a thing people did back then?

More special effects: a deer beats up a giant cat, Santa spins the cat around in a circle and chucks it.

Anyway, Belsnickel and the Clauses more or less kiss and make up, and Belsnickel shrinks down and becomes an elf again, all is happy. Those red wire/blue wire cookies I guess are more of a Dumbo feather? Santa flies everyone back to Cancun. Everyone is happy.

Eh, it's somewhat ridiculous but pleasant enough, I guess.

Then I watched "Midnight at the Magnolia:" This turns out to be a New Year's movie, not a Christmas one. Go figure! This movie starts on December 26! With two best friend radio hosts (Jack and Maggie) whose parents co-own a jazz club called the Magnolia and they have to do dinner with the families that night every year. They might get some kind of radio host promotion or uh, however that works in radio, I don't know. Oh, they're gonna be on satellite radio.

Anyway, J&M give each other a bit of shit on the radio about not inviting their current SO's to family dinner (apparently the families are Quite Intimidating), and then their respective SO's get Uncomfortable about this. Just as J&M agree to have their SO's meet the parents on national radio, the SO's dump them for obviously being more into each other than they are the SO's. This is where Jack gets the bright idea that they should have a fake relationship for the ratings. "We used to prank our families all the time, what's the difference?"

The parents are THRILLED, like "open a 50 year old bottle of wine" thrilled, and J&M are all "Uh....did you know they all wanted us to get together....?" Meanwhile, everyone is hyping the party they'll be throwing and the midnight kiss that will presumably be happening, and J&M are quietly weirded out while still having fun hanging out together. They are adorable, I must say. Why can't I have something like that? Also, seriously, Maggie's dad drags Jack out to the car and gives him his dead wife's wedding ring to propose with and Jack is just OMG THE PRESSURE AND THE LIES on his face.

So did anyone wonder what happens when J&M's most recent exes hear that there's a "meet the parents" on the radio? Well, there's Maggie's ex again, wondering about that. Meanwhile, we never see Jack's "ex" Serena, but they do fish up his prom date, Bianca, semi-frequently. Anyway, Maggie can't go through with a fake relationship in public and says so, and then Jack sings the song he wrote in high school about her. D'awwwww. A year later, he proposes, of course.

Other things about this movie:
How does someone have "crippling stage fright" about playing music but they WORK AS A RADIO HOST?
HAPPY GOAT COFFEE COMPANY?!?

Scott did text me a happy Thanksgiving (on his own?! Woot!), which I did not get back to for a few hours since I was occupied with being on the phone and then being on Zoom. I was thrilled about that but busy, so I apologized for the lateness after I got done with all of that, and he was all that's all right, I was taking a nap. I asked about the house situation and the house is back off the market for another six months so they will be having insurance pay the rent. He seemed to be happy that they could settle in more and buy some of their own stuff.

Said he was doing alright and I (got up the nerve to) said that I just felt like I shouldn't bother him for awhile and he said not to worry about it, "Everything's weird these days. I'm not good about reaching out to people, for a variety of reasons." At this point I got up the nerve to say it helps to know that, and being alone 99% of the time means I have all kinds of fun head games going on about whether or not to bother people. He didn't respond to that.

Guys.

I emailed Meg to whine about it all and ask for advice :P (She didn't really give any, other than "I think you are right.")

If I didn't know the guy in real life and know he can talk when he wants to, I'd seriously wonder.

I had all these things I wanted to talk to him about today, or fuck, the last few weeks, and then it just gets awkward and weird and fuck if I know and ARRRRRRRGH. I just don't get this whole freaking thing.

This, of course, leads me to....

Tonight's Pick A Card (#1): "Have they given up on this connection: should you wait or move on."

Hanged Man: "my brain is telling me to give up but there's so much lying under the surface of this connection that they think they can't move on." "They don't know how they can possibly find a way, they don't feel ready to reach out yet." "I haven't found a way to push through. They can't figure out how to move towards you. I don't think they have given up hope at all." They haven't given up but it seems insurmountable. Like an impossible scenario, but it happened.

"Unbelievable change that has to happen in order for this to come into fruition." "I feel like there is a momentum building up inside of you and you're saying, I don't wanna wait." "If you want to wait, it's going to take a long time for the person to make the offer. He is unsure of himself, he is insecure. There is the potential here for a lot of emotional happiness." "There could be the breakdown of a family situation" (yours or his) "so that's is where the patience has to come in." Eeeeeeek.

"You have to go through the rain in order to get the rainbow. There are some practical concerns that are needing to be addressed here." They are having a lot of practical concerns to deal with and their life is in turmoil. There is a "Not For You" card... and a Rejection card "that swirls around your person's head all the time" and "they're worried about the time it's taking them" and they're worried about how you're dealing with waiting. And then "Soulmate" comes up. Sigh. And "Chemistry." "Finances and career are a factor." Twin Flames comes up (sigh). "I cannot make the first move towards you" comes up. "Seems insurmountable to them." "Playing the waiting game." Waiting for the connection to be what you want. A unicorn comes up for me. Family stuff. "Even if I can't show it, you're always in my heart." "There is an offer in the distant future."

Sigh.

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