Cooking the NYTimes and Other Assorted Retirement Activities

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, which for the Christian calendar closes the Christmas season. Not everyone closes their season on this date.  Many shut 'er down right after the 25th.  Christmas trees have been sitting at the end of driveways, awaiting garbage collection, for over a week.  Slowly you notice the dimming of the holiday lights, always a source of sadness for me in this gloomy darkness of what has been a grey, slushy, muddy, brown winter.  The stores turned everything over on the 26th and now the pinks, reds and whites of Valentine's Day brighten the aisles. Being the fan of the Christmas season that I am, I start early--mid-November this year--and will begin the dismantling today.  Tomorrow I will pull the plugs on the outdoor lights.  We will bring the fake deer gracing the front lawn into the storage shed.  The planters will remain until the medium holding the decor in place melts, probably late March.  The Christmas dishes ...

Yes, this is me. Let's face it.  The Spousal Unit™ and I watched way, way, way too many Hallmark Holiday Movies this season.  So many, in fact, that as we scrolled through to find something to watch, we found ourselves saying, "Oh, I saw that one already."  Once, the Dan-o said that about one I hadn't seen.  I know, pretty pathetic, or, as our President might say, "Sad." Anyhow, they have an insidious way of creeping into your subconscious.  At an unnamed point this December, I found myself thinking how lovely it would be to engage in the activities that are hallmarks of the Hallmark Holiday Movies.   Going to the Annual Christmas Festival and Tree Lighting and Choral Concert and whatever else falls into that category.  Finding the BEST TREE EVER at the tree lot (even though my home is bedecked with 6 artifical trees). Decorating same with lights and garlands and stringing popcorn and perhaps even playfully tossing the popcorn at each ot...