Another year, another chance!

As usual, the new year arrived without much ado here in the Hess-mobile. We had our traditional lobster on New Year's Eve ..

And the next morning we made the, as always much anticipated, Oil-balls!

The only difference was that I run the whole show this year, meaning that I prepared the dough and baked them as well.
Normally James does the baking part, but he looked like he had too much fun organizing the file cabinets, so I thought I'll just start and before I knew it I'd finished them all!

                                           

                                                              Out with the old, in with the new!

We watched the Rose Parade from sunny Pasadena, which went on as usual again after being cancelled last year!

                                   

And we toasted the New Year with some (real) bubbles at happy hour:

Let's hope this year will be the year that Covid finally gets under control, so life can finally go back to normal again.

According to a Swedish researcher, due to the latest 0-micron variation that spreads incredibly fast but isn't half as potent as the previous ones, the virus will run it's course in a couple of months and come March it will be reduced to nothing more than a flue and fully manageable, even without vaccines.
Which of course will be totally awesome .. we'll see, I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed!

In the meantime life goes on like 'normal' here. The snow is gone and temperatures are up a little, but instead it is raining cats and dogs pretty much the whole time.
Everything around us is dripping wet and soggy, it's dark and gloomy most of the time and I'm having the lights, and the heaters, on all day!
I'm keeping myself entertained with watching 'my' flock:

                      

Some of the finches have finally discovered the thistle seeds in this little feeder!
And every now and than the King-of-the-suet-feeder, aka a Northern Flicker, comes along to hack big chunks out of the suet ..

                                       

                                 He's making a big mess, and is a bully, but a strikingly handsome one!

During the snow we also had another interesting visitor:

    

He/she, a coyote by the way, was rather small and very scruffy looking, and made several passes through the orchard over the day. I think he was hungry ..

I'm still not doing any walking because my heel/foot is still hurting like the dickens. I've tried several different insoles and I should be doing a variation of stretching exercises, which I keep forgetting, and of course I don't see much improvement at all.
One of my New Year's resolutions is to work on it harder and get that resolved this year so .. we'll see.
Fortunately I have more hobbies than is good for me so I'm never bored, but I do love my walks and miss being outside something terribly.
Oh well, patience dear Watson ..

Talking about patience .. I finally finished my 'crazy elves' puzzle and am working on my Christmas one. I know, a little late but that one's actually  almost finished also, after which I'll move on to the one of the New Year's party ... I'm on a roll!
I've also dusted off my table loom, which I bought way back when in 2004 in a Texas thrift store and have not ever done anything with .. yeah, one of those buys ..
But, it's another one of my New Year's resolutions to finally set the thing up and do something with it.
So here goes nothing: 

 

At the moment I'm studying two you-tube videos on how to wind a warp, since that has to happen first even before you get to actually 'dressing' of your loom.

                                      

                                          

  

The lady who's explaining everything has a very strong New Zealand accent (where this brand of a loom, Ashford, is made), half the time even closed captioning cannot come up with the correct subtitles, and besides that it's sounding extremely complicated so .. we'll see how it goes.

New Year's resolutions are not my (any-one's?) strongest suit to begin with ..