(From BlueSky) Margaret & I went Advent-calendar wild this year. I’m still working with last year’s Diamine inks from Inkvent, so that was out; I chose a black tea calendar for her. She then found a gin calendar for me, and I added a dark chocolate calendar for her. And she found a clue-a-day mystery calendar for us to share.
Day One of the gin calendar is Silent Pool gin, of which the Gin Guild description is good. I noted the juniper right away, and thought I detected elderberry. Strong medicinals, clean and sharp straight-up gin. I was pleased — I thought it might favour a twist of lime in a G&T, or a bitter orange. Strong approval.
Margaret wouldn’t want to test her Whittard’s Christmas-themed black tea at night, but her chocolate pleased her very much. The calendar doesn’t give any information about its particulars, though.
We watched a video and opened the ‘newspaper’ for the first day of our mystery. The company required us to accept cookies for online clues we had already paid for, which to my mind is not a good start. Margaret, though, has already combed the evidence for clues and has taken extensive notes.
In this morning’s run, I couldn’t begin getting loose until my legs were tired, and the combination meant a distinctly sluggish run. After I started, after just a quarter mile or so, I considered giving up on the run and just walking the rest of the distance, but I thought my legs might get loose in another quarter mile or so, and I kept running. This was not a good idea.
Since my knees are beginning to feel achey on a regular basis, I’ve started wondering what I might do to keep exercising if I gave up street running. (I’m also holing open the possibility that my knees still resent the hard landings on the treadmill in our Boston hotel.) Very few modes of exercise will be as convenient as just stepping out the front door and running, but old people such as I* can’t just bang their legs onto pavement every day for an indefinite future.
* I saw a squib about drawing young people to church recently, one of the points of which was engaging young clergy in leadership of that process, and I started to think it was a great idea and I should think about participating in such a venture…. I did catch myself after only a few split seconds of that folly.