Holiday photo recap

In the spirit of getting things done before grad school starts again on Tuesday, here's a semi-random, non-linear update. What follows will be an incomplete but well-intentioned summary of my holidays, so take that for what it's worth.

This first photo is unrelated to anything, but deserves to be included for the novelty: Marle's common-in-Germany-but-not-in-the-States poppyseed twist.

Daniel and I spent December 24-January 5 in Virginia visiting many of our wonderful family members and seeing some friends as well. It was great to reconnect in person, and also to reflect on the meanings of place and people in my life (and the interconnectedness of the two).

If you look closely here, you can tell that my in-laws' Christmas tree is baby-proof on the bottom half only, to accommodate my two toddler nephews.

Game night with the fam.

Gifts with the in-laws.

Cousins.

More games.

New experience: My family went to the Melting Pot! So delicious.

This is the closest we got to a normal picture.

 I didn't take any other pictures of the food because I was too busy stuffing myself. I'm sure you understand.

After Daniel and I returned home from the holidays, our housemates threw a little surprise birthday party for Daniel's 29th birthday.

Mostly it featured tons of balloons. And cake.

Please take a minute to appreciate this birthday throne they crafted out of balloons and a dining room chair.

Unit love.

Next up: A list of goals for 2017...

The friendly sign found a friend

As you may remember, I put up my "Welcome your neighbors" sign at Thanksgiving.

It's been very hardy until now, but on Monday, we had record-breaking winds here in the Springs. There were sustained 50-60 mile-per-hour winds with gusts over 100 mph. Power outages were rampant, fallen trees and debris littered the streets, and the whole day felt vaguely apocalyptic. Our next-door neighbor's property currently looks like this:

Needless to say, my sign blew away. I wasn't too concerned, as I still have about fifty of them in my basement waiting to be distributed. (If you're in the COS area and want a sign, hit me up!) So I planned to replace it as soon as I was sure the apocalyptic winds had died down.

But the next afternoon, I looked out the front window, and lo, there was my sign. It was lying on the ground just inside our fence, with the only plausible explanation being that someone found it, knew it belonged to my house, and returned it.

As it turns out, the sign had not blown completely out of the ground, but broken: the metal post had severed neatly in half, with the bottom half remaining in the ground and the top half soaring to kingdom come. So I stuck it back in the ground, shorter this time, but equally heartwarming.

To my neighbor who found my sign, knew where it lived, and cared enough to return it home: thank you. You were the antithesis to the people who have stolen these signs in attempts to stifle the message, and I am so grateful to know you exist.

2016 books

Guys, I failed at my reading challenge last year. I got about six of the twelve and then mostly forgot about it for five or six months. (Not that I wasn't reading, I just wasn't reading books that fit these categories.) Here are the ones I did complete:

1. a book published this year (A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas)
2. a book you can finish in a day (Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon)
3. a book you've been meaning to read (Children of God by Mary Doria Russell)
4. a book chosen for you by your spouse, partner, sibling, child, or BFF (The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale, recommended by Anali)
5. a book published before you were born (Sorcery and Cecelia by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer)
6. a book you've already read at least once (The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell)

Nevertheless, I did meet my Goodreads challenge: I set my yearly goal at 40 books and read 44. Here are some favorites, in no particular order, which I would recommend to just about anybody.

• Uprooted by Naomi Novic: A lush, gorgeous, Polish-fairy-tale-inspired fantasy. The magic in this story is among the most poetic and vividly imagined I've ever read.
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates: Essential reading for anyone aspiring toward racial justice. The beginning pages are rather heady, possibly to the point of being off-putting, but it gets easier and is absolutely worth it. I can't say much else about it except that this one should probably be required for everybody.
• Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson: The first novel in the Gold Seer trilogy takes place during the 1849 gold rush and follows a gutsy, smart, anti-stereotype heroine and her diverse cadre of pioneering adopted family members. I loved so many things about this book, but most of all I loved the author's adept tackling of marginalization and bias, set during a time when anti-bias sentiment was decidedly unpopular.
• Attachments by Rainbow Rowell: An adorable and hilarious novel taking place in a newspaper office at the turn of the millennium. I couldn't get enough of these characters and their witty, endearing, compulsively readable interactions.
• Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card: I'm a few decades late to this one, but it's timeless enough to be appreciated anytime. I adored its handling of cultural and social anthropology, which made it much more engaging to me than the battle school setting of its predecessor, Ender's Game. It's also surprisingly relevant to the current political and social climate of the United States.

If you have read or plan to read any of these books, I'd love to talk about them with you! I'm always open to new book recommendations, too. Happy bookish new year!