Christmas and New Year’s Day came and went pleasantly, a pause in paying attention to the rest of the world except maybe for weather reports. And I did hear that Betty White died, not an hour after I saw her face on a magazine in a drug store rack, noting her upcoming 100th birthday. RIP, Betty.

A bit of Christmas morning. A few hours later, a zoom with other family members in Texas.

Christmas dinner was nearly the same, in foodstuff prepared for the table, as Thanksgiving, except no beans and instead a large salad. Toward the New Year, Yuriko prepared osechi ryori, as every year. Homemade dishes need not be as elaborate as in this article, but they are put in a three-tiered box, and ours are just as delicious as any prepared by a store.

Mostly pleasant December weather gave way at the end of the month to snow and then heavy snow for New Year’s Day, but nothing blizzard-like. Nothing to interrupt traffic for long, though I expect not that many people were out on Saturday or Sunday anyway. We didn’t go anywhere either, but we did shovel, since today brought a return to workweeks.