Day: December 23, 2023

Exit the Advent Calendar

While I enjoy the same felt advent calendar from my childhood year after year, Matt isn’t interested in partaking, even if there is chocolate involved. He floated the idea of getting the advent calendar from Exit, the in-home escape room company. And so we did.

We started the calendar after December 1, and then Matt went to Michigan for a bit, so we had a spreadsheet to catch up and keep us on track. That meant that we often did two days in one setting.

Eric was over for Saturday gaming and he did the last three nights with us. You can see how we really pulled everything apart at the end. That was because one of the rooms early on didn’t work, and Matt wanted to find the tiny emoji thing we couldn’t make appear.

One of the thing I enjoy (while also hating) about the games is that the helping clues are sometimes very blunt. There was a doozy in this one, somewhat mocking us for not getting an element that we had earlier commented MUST be something.

In the end, we found the prize: this tiny button labeling us X-MAS HERO.

It was well worth it.

December Movies to See

Thanks to the holiday schedule and a contest at work, we got Monday through Thursday of the Christmas week off, plus I took off Friday. What does that mean? Much time to watch movies in theaters. And this is great timing as there are many movies to see. Here was my planning sheet. As you can see, I had moviegoing companions for many of these.

Of this list I didn’t make it to Fallen Leaves (which is supposed to be great) and Boys in the Boat (which I’m somewhat ambivalent about given how much I liked the book.)

Kelly asked if I wanted to see The Color Purple, so I ended up seeing four of five movies with people. That’s pretty rare.

My ranking: Iron Claw (recommended), the Color Purple (recommended), Anyone But You (good), Poor Things (I liked things about it, but kind of really hated it, Skip), Wonka (the fat jokes entirely ruined this somewhat okay film, Skip).

7611 Work: Linen Closet

The linen closet was a huge ball of crumpled linens. Our task: sort them into like things (tablecloths with tablecloths, sheet sets with sheet sets) and bundle and label them.

I also found this early cross stitch I did. It is a delightful relic of my rudimentary skills: not properly fitted to the frame, and a bit uneven. I do like the rickrack border though. Everything is better with rickrack.

You can see I was not shy about stretching embroidery floss across long distances. I have a vague memory of not liking to knot things off and start again in a new place.

It’s interesting that looking at this I feel trapped and tight, but yet I find embroidering very relaxing at my current age. Is it because it’s so messy?