A window display featuring characters from the animated series Wallace and Gromit, along with Shaun the Sheep. They are dressed in winter attire amidst a holiday-themed background. โ€œBaa-bourโ€.

That part of the year when we’re just cruising along, waiting for it to end… Almost done with 2023. Also, sorry about the photo. This was not a week for photos. Anyway, Happy Holidays, if you celebrate, see you on the other side.

  • ๐Ÿฅณ Party Weekend. We had three birthday parties this time around. One on Saturday, two on Sunday. We went to bed way too late on Saturday, so were thankful that one of the Sunday ones was canceled. But another was just around the corner, on Monday. A cousin turned 4.

  • ๐Ÿ˜ค For this birthday party we had to drive out of the city, but not even too far. To one of the closer suburbs. Still, it took us over an hour and a half to get there! And 20 minutes to get back! How do people go through this every day? It’s crazy! Waze kept trying to sort things out, but traffic was stuck everywhere. We did have a lot of fun when we finally made it. I’m happy that tinyMovieStar has cousins her age, and that she gets to play with them once in a while. The kid’s father (movieStar’s cousin) has the most amazing man cave, covered with lego and old school gaming consoles. He even built an arcade machine himself, with dozens of games.

  • ๐Ÿ’ค The little one, also spent a night at her grandparents, as another cousin a couple of years older than she is was spending a few days with her grandmother as well. I drove there to drop her off, stayed for a while, and drove back. She enjoyed it, we got to watch some tv on an empty house. I still miss her awfully when we’re separated. We picked her up the following day. She was not happy to leave, I can tell you that. We found her learning how to play videogames on a Switch, dancing to Tik Tok challenges, and other stuff not totally appropriate for her age, I guess.. Add chocolate to that, and you can imagine the kind of three-year old we have at the moment living with us.

  • ๐ŸŠโ€โ™€๏ธ As suspected, we did not attend swimming class this week. Or ballet class. Teacher was sick on latter, tinyMovieStar sick of it on the other.

  • ๐Ÿ‘ต๐Ÿป The Grannies! We searched on dozens (yes!) of shops. Then the community decided to lend a hand, so the search now stretches from Lisbon to London (Oxana rules!), and two locations in the States (thank you, Charlie, and Luke). We were then joined by the Chaves gang, covering the north of the country, and Galicia. That adds another country to the list. A transcontinental search for a โ‚ฌ15 toy! We still haven’t been able to find The Grannies from Bluey. No one cares about them but our little one, no shop carries them, and this has been THE quest this Christmas.

  • ๐Ÿงฟ IVPN renewed for a year. I’d been getting a few months at a time, up till now, but decided to spring for a full year. Saved a couple of months, and I’m very happy with it anyway. In the past I’d get these super saver 3-year things on some other service, and then move providers before the time was up. Ended up not using the whole period. Silly.

  • ๐Ÿ”ฎ I am SO impressed by the alt text generator in Mimi. I don’t even try to do it myself anymore. It needs minimal editing, once in a while, but it’s perfect most of the time. In my opinion it’s a great use of AI.

  • ๐Ÿ›๏ธ I moved my shop (yeah, I had one) to Gumroad. Since I never sold a single photo on that shop, I might as well go for wallpapers on the new one, and add photos. I’m busy while doing it, that’s the important bit. I don’t think I’ll sell anything here as well.

  • ๐Ÿฟ The Family Plan. Meh. From the series “Shitty Movies I Watch”.

  • ๐Ÿ“บ Bored to Death, episode one. I like Zach, I like Ted, I don’t mind Jason. That’s why. Not sure if I’ll move on to episode two, though. Watched a few episodes of Blue Eye Samurai. And, we finally got here, we could start watching season 6 of The Crown. Last, but not least, my favorite at the moment: Slow Horses. I wait for it every week, and watch as soon as it lands.

  • ๐ŸŽ™๏ธ Back to podcast listening, with so much driving around on my own again. Smartless, HemisphericViews, and a couple others.

  • ๐ŸงŠ IceCubesApp is what I’m using to browse Mastodon, almost exclusively, these days. It has come a very long way. Tons of cool icons too. Still keep Mona around, but this is the one on my Dock at the moment. Let’s see how long it lasts there. This is also the app where I first came across AI powered alt text generation.