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When I finally made it home (we’re still back in December 2019), I had no plans except to go to Wegmans, bake a cake, and watch the latest Star Wars movie. It’s amazing how successful you can be at meeting your goals when you give yourself two weeks to go to a grocery store and watch a movie. Overall, my accomplishments for Christmas break included the following: 

– baking white chocolate/macadamia nut/Craisin cookies, cream puffs (choux pastry + crème patissiere), and a two-layer cake with whipped cream frosting and chocolate ganache all from scratch

– assembling two 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles

– using Netflix to watch Kim’s Convenience, The Irishman, The Two Popes, Mary Poppins Returns, and The Last Jedi, the last in anticipation of seeing The Rise of Skywalker at the movie theater [It was good. It’s a Star Wars movie, so be prepared for plenty of illogical decisions and departures from the laws of physics, but there are also lightsabers, spaceships, and lasers, which, let’s be honest, are the main highlights of a Star Wars movie.]

Clockwise from top left: cookies, slice of cake, cream puffs, top of cake

– getting dim sum. For all its self-proclaimed excellence, Ann Arbor doesn’t have many options for Chinese food, and none, as far as I’ve found, for dim sum.

– exploring Castle Island and Boston (Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market, the Common, Chinatown) [More on this in a separate post.]

– spending an abnormally warm Saturday afternoon raking leaves leftover from November

– spending a typically cold Tuesday morning (the day before I left) shoveling snow/slush off of the driveway. When I’m home, I shovel the straight part of our unnecessarily long driveway. I have a method, and it exercises both sides of the body equally.

Clockwise from top left: Clouds on the plane ride back to Ann Arbor, sunset over lake,
sunset at home, puzzle #1 (puzzle #2 was an underwater scene)

– going to Wegmans, where I admired their cheese selection and bakery

– ordering Christmas cards on New Year’s Eve. Christmas in January, anyone?

– not losing Monopoly to my brother’s girlfriend and her brother. Turns out if you actually follow the printed rules, the game doesn’t take twenty-seven days to play.

– not burning the church down at the Christmas Eve candlelight service

– watching Jeopardy!

– eating

– eating exactly one box of blueberry Chex

– sleeping

So that was Christmas break 2019.  It was great, and then I had to return to Ann Arbor to finish up another year of grad school.