Sunday, December 26

Today I am grateful for:

That my sweetie is home, it makes the cold snap a little more bearable knowing there's someone here if I need help.

It does help to have him come out and do chores with me.

We put the extra liner on Wonder's blanket. Most of the time I don't need to blanket her, but she is a little on the thin side this year, and this weather (about -30C) is cold enough to warrant it. I have put blankets on the ponies too.

This weather is cold, but normal for where we live. At least once over the winter, you can expect about a week of -30C and sometimes colder. We do our best to plan for it, and we do expect it.

The goats are in the garage now. It is heated to about 5C.

We've been walking the goats and ponies around the yard for the last day or two, to make sure they are moving enough. They tend to stand inside their shed all day.

We didn't go anywhere today, but being at home was okay too.

We watched the last two episodes of "The Queen's Gambit", and it was an excellent show all the way through.

December 25

That I had my sweetie home for Christmas. It was just us, like it's been for the last three years, but at least we have that.

I got some nice presents, and my sweetie wants a particular coffee grinder that we have yet to find, and he bought his own Christmas bottle of fancy alcohol, so he didn't have much to open.

We had a pretty simple day at home, and my sweetie made a really tasty meal out of food I can eat. He put a lot of effort into making it look nice. As much as I sometimes miss the normalcy of just eating whatever I wanted to for holidays, there is also a recognition that I used to eat a LOT at Christmas. There was nothing wrong with our simple meal, and there's no regrets over too much food later.

My sweetie talked to a lot of his family again, even though he talked to them yesterday.

We re-watched "Dune", though I was kind of napping through it.

Interesting things I learned recently.

I am trying to be more aware of learning new and interesting things. A lot of the time it's just things I stumble across online, but I think it still counts.

I learned from watching a YouTube video that sometimes people with spinal cord injuries need to wear compression socks and an abdomen wrap to help them maintain even blood pressure. This particular person also lost the ability to sweat, so she has to be careful about temperature.

That the Star of Bethlehem was likely the alignment of two planets.

From the film "The Last Duel" I learned that a person who accused another person of something (in this case, of rape), if the accused was found innocent by a duel (as in, they won the duel, thus God showed their innocence), the accuser could also be burned alive for bearing "false witness".

From a crime novel: that it is hypothetically possible for a foreign ambassador to commit some pretty bad crimes in the country they are visiting, because of diplomatic immunity, and they can declare their apartment to be off limits to police.

From my art history book: that at one time (middle ages), Switzerland specialized in having mercenary armies for hire. They did a lot of work for France, and were known for the use of pikes. Apparently Switzerland was politically isolated and not involved personally in the wars between other countries in Europe, so their military was to be trusted to work for you if you paid them. Not what I was thinking of when you think of the famous "Swiss neutrality". I guess this political neutrality is how the Swiss bank thing evolved too.

That the depiction of the Scottish warriors as being a barbarian tribe in "Braveheart" was not accurate in the least. They would have had armor and fought in normal formations etc, not being half naked and just running at the other army like banshees. They were just as "modern" as anyone else.

That AM radio is more reliable than FM, can be picked up at greater distances from the transmitter, and is the one that can sometimes be received by people's fillings.

This is just odds and ends of things that I've learned over the last week or so. I am going to try to post stuff like this more often, because I'm kind of fascinated by the randomness of the things you learn just by reading a book or watching a movie.

What are some things you've learned recently?