A Christmas Tree always brings cheer into my day, my evenings, and even my nights. It is a dreary as dreary can be outside the window today. The sky is grey, big trucks and little trucks rumble back and forth, up and down the street, just outside the front door, and it is cold and damp out there.
Meanwhile, in the living room, the coloured lights are glowing through the pine needles, bright decorations and sparkly tinsel reflect the coloured lights, and the smell of pine stirs up to wrap its arms around me when I walk by the tree. I am so glad that having a real Christmas Tree is something Attila likes to do. A happy coincidence.
I planned supper this morning, an experiment in the Instant Pot. The ingredients are gathered and sitting on the kitchen counter. In an effort to reduce the amount of meat eaten, recipes with plant-based complete protein are on my mind. Tonight’s dinner will be pasta, tomato, corn, and a bit of cheese. I don’t know the amounts of each yet, or how I am going to cook it all in the Instant Pot, but once I get started I’ll make it up as I go along.
On Tuesday I ordered Attila’s Christmas gift from Amazon. The estimated delivery was no later than December 17th. Cause for concern, if it came even a bit late it might miss Christmas altogether. I had a Plan B. However, the package was delivered to the house this morning, and my Christmas shopping concerns are over for this year. Now all there is left to concern myself with is food, glorious food.
I have spent some time this autumn watching YouTube videos. Almost all of them are attempting to make money with their videos. Some claim to be offering educational opportunities, appraising their efforts to be reaching out to those who admire and/or envy them, and who they assume want to emulate them. Many of them are attempting to spread their religious “message”, believing God wants them to spread the word, and provide them money at the same time, which goes to prove that God is on their side in their not so humble opinions. Some of them are unabashedly selling their personal activities as entertainment, and using the proceeds to further their interests in those activities. The unabashed entertainers are my favourites, there is no effort to rationalize what they are doing, attempting to transform a money making scheme into personal virtue or divine calling. They all have a slightly different angle on what they think they are doing… but they are all doing the same thing, taking a shot at the almighty dollar.
I thought about doing videos, but really, I am not sure I wouldn’t get caught in the net of desire for cash rewards, which would alter what I focus on in life. The pursuit of money has a way of wearing away the better parts of anything good. So I’ve decided to stay here on this blog, focusing on the increasingly redundant written word, writing what I want to write, interacting with a few lovely people, and carrying on in relative obscurity. I don’t make money writing here, no ads appear, no information is harvested from readers to be resold to advertisers or analysts, no income generating schemes… just me and my thoughts and my dreams and my feelings. This works for me.
Worldly
Weather
-5°C
Date: 11:00 AM EST Thursday 13 December 2018
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 102.7 kPa
Tendency: Rising
Temperature: -5.3°C
Dew point: -9.1°C
Humidity: 75%
Wind: NE 16 km/h
Wind Chill: -11
Visibility: 19 km
Quote
“When there’s snow on the ground, I like to pretend I’m walking on clouds.”
Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata
Your writing about your Christmas tree convinced me to turn ours on. Thanks! Normally, the tree wouldvstay off until sunset, when all the house light are turned on. But since we’ve switched over to all LED bulbs now the cost is so negligible that I can have them on all day long with little harm to the electric bill. Gone are the days of the post-Christmas $200+ electric bill.
You made me wonder what you were searching on that younfound all these evangelists on Youtube. Honestly, I’ve never seen a religious video on Youtube. But I do see numerous song and song parody videos and people/companies that repeat news and comedy clips with digitized voices.
I actually seldom go to Youtube, except to hear old songs, see clips of current news, and to find how-tos. My current favorite is Instagram, where I like to look at how people are decorating their homes. They also have DIY how-tos, though not at the level of Youtube.
Teri, I like having the interior lights on on dreary days, and I particularly like Christmas lights on dreary days, 🙂
I watch alls sorts of things, crochet, instant pot, bread baking, fermenting, gardening, bush craft, construction and renovation… the whole religious thing is not usually obvious at first glance, it is after you watch a few consecutive videos from one creator that it starts to get obvious, and they reveal themselves occsasionally so as to affirm the suspicion. Disappointing, but people do what people are gonna do.
The first whiff of religious zeal and I’m outta there, wherever there may be!
I await your collection of Instant Pot recipes (or videos, whichever comes first).
-Kate
Kate, I am not as quick as you, to exit once the religious tones come out, I go by the rule of three, three mentions and I am out of there… I think that perhaps when it comes to religion I have to revise my rule, change it to the rule of one.
When I bought the Instant Pot I thought, OK, here is another appliance/toy I’ll bring into the house and soon after leave to collect dust. It caught me by surprise! Tonight’s dinner was not up to snuff, I’ll have to revise it. Everything was cooked, so the texture was fine, but the flavour needed tweakign. Because I cook low sodium, flavour is a very big deal, no salt to liven up a bland dish. Back to the drawing board.