A colleague just turned me on to “A.P. Bio.” I need the laughs. It had me at Paula Pell flashing a photo before a classroom of students and screaming, “This is my cervix! Who can tell me the five things wrong with it?”

Funny how I watch much more TV since cutting the cable cord years ago.

Working on this Boxing Day. I do have random Grateful Dead sets keeping me company, and at least I can wear the blanket hoodie and slippers that F picked out me for Christmas.

My brain feels as foggy and drizzly as the weather. But that’s honestly nothing new these days.

On my second viewing of “Fellowship of the Ring” with the family on this Christmas Day. Extended version this time.

I very much want to be a hobbit when I grow up.

So much lack of seasonal joy this year on social media. Not quite despair. Much grief, sadness, ennui. This is perhaps nothing new, really, but people seem much more open about it this year. And so many face the New Year with dread, myself among them.

All that said, I’m still wishing us all peace.

Just watched the Kennedy Center Honors tribute to the Grateful Dead wind down. Will never get used to Bob Weir looking like he should be on a box of frozen fish sticks.

Starting my second viewing of “Somebody Somewhere.” I know I keep going on about it, but I’ve really needed this show.

Grief, loneliness, feeling like an outsider, finding one’s tribe. There’s a lot there. And I love it all.

Linking this here for my own reference as we as a family dive deep into the “Lord of the Rings” universe: “How to Watch the Lord of the Rings Movies and TV Show in Order: A Guide to Middle-earth’s Epic Saga” (People).

Almost all of my Christmas shopping has been online. Finally got out for a few analog retail errands and it was surprisingly not insane.

Grateful to not have to get out much until Christmas Eve Mass on Tuesday. Fingers crossed that I can log out a little early from work that day.

Made my first batch of holiday fudge last night; F brought a big container of it to share with her D&D group this afternoon.

I used to make five or six varieties every December to give out. Haven’t done that in a couple of years. Not feeling it again this year.

That said, I’ll make more regular fudge and some ube fudge, and make some candied almonds. Maybe a batch of cookies. All pretty simple. But I’m not getting ambitious like I have in the past.

Generally pretty low energy this season. Hard to tell if it’s related to physical health, grief, or depression — or all three.

I look forward to having Christmas come and go, leaving that “dead week” through New Year’s Day without all the holiday pressure. At least I have something to look forward to.

Feels like a remarkable number of baseball legends died this past year. This list that ran with Rickey Henderson’s obit in the NY Times is startling.

Happy seasonal Caturday.

Husband found the weighted blanket I feared had ended up into a Goodwill pile.

I am never leaving my recliner again.

Finally getting around to watching “Fellowship of the Ring.” A lot of the teenager’s D&D recaps are starting to make sense to me now.

Just finished binging the second season of “Somebody Somewhere.” I’ve never felt closer emotionally to a show and its characters, and that’s saying an awful lot.

Whoever came up with the phrase “no regrets” clearly never had a McRib sandwich.

Finally got around to watching my first episode of “Somebody Somewhere,” and I would probably still be binging it were it not for stupid stuff like sleep and work.

So sad to see so many restaurants closing around these parts. The longtime supper club in town just shut down this week, and a crepes place is closing next month. Just learned a Filipino restaurant I finally got to visit in Wheaton closed down.

Really hoping this isn’t a harbinger of a steep downturn.

I think I have finally made my peace with Threads. Yes, it’s run by an evil billionaire (though slightly less evil than Elon Musk), it’s got terrible functionality, and the posts can be deeply annoying and full of scraped content and engagement bait. (And now it’s starting to add recommended followers in my notifications, which I’m trying to turn off.)

But I like a lot of the Threads community when you filter out the cloying, whiny, scrapy, baity stuff. (It got really bad after the election.) And if you game the algorithm enough – if you must go with the “for you” feed – the posts can be tolerable.

And yes, this means the social media pendulum has swung for me once again, and I’ve grown weary of Bluesky’s own irritating traits, like the relative radio silence and rising tide of follows from “resistance” accounts and donation solicitors. So at this point, I’m just dual-posting shorter stuff from here and trying to avoid spending a ton of time consuming either Bluesky or Threads.

I have finally consumed my first Starbucks cranberry bliss bar of the season. The holidays can officially begin.

New mini-journal.

New 3.5-by-5.5-inch brown notebook with sticker on it that says, “Employees must stop crying before returning to work.”

I never thought I’d have a job that made my old wire service gig, which I hated with a white hot passion, look like a walk in the park. But here we are.

The White Trophy Husband and I went to Seafood City today, stocked up on frozen lumpia, and bought enough Filipino groceries to last us maybe a week. This should take care of my cravings for ube ice cream and pandesal and pork siopao for a while.

Oh, and Jollibee. We did not forget the Jollibee.

I am now recovering from all the crowds, Christmas music in Tagalog, and strobe-lit parols (some playing holiday tunes, others dressed up in neon!) on the recliner; about to shut my eyes from the sensory overload. Maligayang pasko, bitches.

I asked the teenager, who is not a fan of news these days for the sake of her mental health, whether she has been keeping up with news about Luigi Mangione and the CEO shooting.

“Not willingly,” she said.

“New Jersey Mystery Drone” is my new band name.

I reactivated my Facebook account so I could get back into my other Meta accounts. Now I can’t remember how the hell to re-deactivate it. So over Meta.