Happy Year of the Ox

 

Happy Year of the Ox, everyone!

My colleague from work sent me that when I wished her a happy New Year, since she is originally from Shanghai. I took the day off of work, and my art was done at Fired Up so Travalon and I went to pick it up. I'm pretty happy with the tropical scene, except for the reflection of the sun on the water. That I could have done better.

Due to COVID, we couldn't have a big birthday party for Rich officially being Over the Hill this year, but since his birthday was yesterday, and that was also Lunar New Year, Travalon and I celebrated this fortuitous confluence of events by having Rich over for Chinese take-out. I didn't think to make him a cake, but fortunately I still had a couple of slices of the birthday cake my neighbor had made for me, so I thawed one out and stuck a candle in it. Travalon and I joined him in dessert by eating fortune cookies, since for some odd reason the restaurant only gave us two even though we clearly ordered three entrees.

Rich is a Monkey, and this Year of the Ox is supposed to be very professionally lucky for him in the first few months. Which is odd, because he retired at the end of December and can't get another job at the university for like two and a half months. (You have to be retired for like 74 days or something.) Travalon is a snake, and it said his health would be bad this year, and I am a Pig and my Chinese horoscope said someone in my household would be sick this year, so let's hope these horoscopes are not accurate!

Today was about -3 degrees Fahrenheit AND snowing really hard, which I don't remember seeing before. Usually it only snows hard when it's just below freezing, and any snow on a really frigid day is a few tiny flakes. Travalon and I did brave the snow to turn in our ballots for state superintendent of schools, a primary race I had done a lot of research about. I really liked two candidates, but you can only choose one. Then we went to the mall and walked again. I'm such a dork that I was looking forward to going to the mall all week so that I could buy more of those neon-colored rosary bracelets. I did get a bunch (they're $2 each), and at Rogers & Hollands, they had the really cool rosary in the middle.

I will note that the blue and the turquoise bracelets don't glow under my black light, while the one that is purple and green and has a tiny dream catcher in the middle does glow - not just the green but the purple too! It has twelve knots, so I could use it to pray the Chaplet of the Infant Jesus. The stainless steel rosary from Rogers & Hollands was in the Men's section, and at JC Penney we saw a beautiful but ridiculously expensive rosary in the Men's jewelry section, so it seems that someone thinks men wear rosaries as necklaces. I did see some silver rosaries that looked like women's necklaces in one of those jewelry kiosks so apparently wearing rosaries as necklaces is some sort of trend I wasn't aware of. I'm just amazed that you can fine so many rosaries for sale at the mall!

Then we went to Goodwill because Travalon needed some new pants, and I found this sparkly hat, but it doesn't look that sparkly in this photo. It was a whopping $3.

Travalon says it makes me look like I'm ready to go play some tennis, so maybe I will wear it while playing tennis whenever we can actually do that again. We also bought some sparkly pillows that were equally as cost-effective.

Then we exchanged Valentine's Day presents. Here is what Travalon got me: an amethyst rosary (notice the fancy box it came in) and a Brewers' unicorn.

I got him this Detroit Tigers figurine, since that is what he wanted, and he bought the Funko Pop figurine of Lemmy from Motorhead at the mall.

Then at home he was listening to 80's music, and he found out there was a song by MC Skat Kat that sampled "Let's Groove" by Earth, Wind and Fire, so we listened to that. Then we listened to "Let's Groove," and I said Earth, Wind and Fire are definitely my favorite band of all time, but I couldn't decide if I liked that song better or "September." So Travalon played "September," and he said he liked that one slightly better. It is just about the happiest song ever written.

Famous Hat