Life is too short to drink bad wine.

The Holidays were lovely and quiet, we're not really deeply affected by the Pandemic since we don't have a lot of family here that we would go to visit. So a good time was had, the Girl went to see family in Longford with her Father and she really loves them, she got several very thoughtful presents.

I'm a bit low energy probably along with most of the population right now. Still walking the road of dealing with the Type 2 diagnosis, over the holidays I was a bit lax so my numbers were a bit high but I still continued losing weight, I'm down from about 106kg at the end of August to 86kg. The new way of eating is at the same time really hard and really easy. I don't think my figures would be where they are if I had followed the Doctor recommended diet, thankfully a close friend has been using a low carb diet to control her diabetes and it's worked for me as well. Dr Jason Fung's books were hugely useful, especially the one about fasting.

On a down note, I'm still having trouble finding someone to fix our underfloor heating at this point I'm losing hope that it will ever be fixed. People just don't want to touch it because it's not a straightforward easy fix.

So, this year because I don't have the huge commute I've been able to do all the holiday baking that I intended to. I can't wait to see how the Stollen turned out (has to sit for a minimum of 2 weeks) since I've historically produced dusty dry doorstops rather than anything edible. I made Kipferl which turned out well as well as the Coconut Macaroons that Ursula loves and the Hazelnut Macaroons that are my favourite. I think I've finally hit on a gingerbread recipe I really like they are thin and crisp and full of deep burnt caramel flavour. I also made a batch of Bettmaenchen which I remember from my childhood the recipe might be a tiny bit heavy on rose water but we can adjust in future batches, I already reduced the sugar content by a third since the recipe came from the States. The Hazelnut Macaroons are delicious but really fragile since we couldn't find the rest of our Oblaten, I think my Mother may have accidentally thrown them away. It's either that or we will run across them in July in a corner somewhere.

Now if we could only have guests to feed these to things would be perfect.

I had a slow start this morning, I think I'm going to try to get to be a bit earlier today, 10:30 lights out will hopefully do it. I've been working my way through various sleep meditations on InsightTimer and some are really excellent but few are exactly what I want. There's way too much you feel sleepy, very sleepy, you deserve to be sleepy, your definitely sleepy. On the other hand, I want something more exciting than the average body scan with relaxation. I don't want to do too many chakra meditations for fear of conditioning myself into falling asleep whenever I do one. I guess I'm just picky. Toaster kept me company for a lot of the night lying right next to my feet, after I went to the bathroom she decided to perch on my shoulder and proceeded to slowly slide off as she fell asleep.

Were' trying a new dish, a beetroot, salad with feta and those bitter salad leaves the name of which currently escape me. I've also recently found a split lentil dhal recipe I'm dying to try, it's simple but I think will be very yummy. Maybe I'll try making roti again to go with it.

My nervous eye twitch is still bothering me, it's been well over a year now and it's getting worse rather than better. All I can see online is sleep more, reduce stress, and drink less caffeine. Which I've done a lot of but apparently not enough.

Need to motivate on making more mustard for yule presents soon, need to add that to my Google tasks.I need to start inventorying my stores to prep for holiday baking, this weekend perhaps.

I drove into the dawn on my bus this morning, traffic was light and we got through quickly. Now it's overcast and kind of grey but new beginnings are in the air. I'm pretty much the only person in the office today everyone else just stayed home, tomorow the College closed down until January 3rd. This is time off in addition to any vacation we get, yeah for European time off policies. Once I'm permanently employed here I will get 21 days of vacation plus about a week of time off around certain holidays that is extra as well as the holidays themselves. On Tuesday we had our Christams luncheon at "1592" which is the swanky restaurant on campus run by the catering school. It was amazing at my table we had 8 people and started off with 6 bottles of wine on the table, 3 red, 3 white. It wasn't plonk either, the red was amazing and I would be surprised if it cost any less than €30 a pop. I had deep fried brie with a cranberry relish for a starter and filet mignon with a pepper sauce as a main course. I decided on Blackforrest Gateaux for dessert, this was accompanied by an excellent ice wine and coffee. After all that a bottle of port made the rounds. I was more than three sheets to the wind and I drank significantly less than most. We started at 1pm (I was expecting to be back in the office by 2:30pm or so) around 4pm I asked whether we were going back to work, this comment was greeted with much laughter and finger pointing. So I went and caught an early bus and was home by 5:30pm. I am told the party went on after I left and eventually ended up in some pub or other. My office mate can't remember how she got home. What can I say, it's Ireland.

Today I am wrapping up bits and pieces and will be taken out to lunch by my boss, I suspect I'm going home after that. I will stop by a store called Sherridan's which has the reputation for being the best cheese shop in Ireland where I plan to pick up some swanky cheeses for our Christmas dinner. I also need to find some good chocolate as I want to make chocolate mousse for dessert.

All the most wonderful Yule wishes to everyone, may the new sun tickle your nose and make you happy.