1. Discovering that it had been so long since I’d written a blog post (or, indeed, even logged in to the site) that I’d irretrievably forgotten all of the necessary log-in information. While I found this both embarrassing and annoying, I’m trying to take some comfort that you have to be determined and smarter than me to figure out how to get Gmail to cough up a forgotten password. Anyway, the upshot is this shiny new place for what could have been here: http://reallycantstandstill.blogspot.com/
2. Heading to the mountains in search of some sun. It’s been cloudy for 27 days straight and we had a stretch right around Christmas when the high temperatures never got out of single digits. Luckily, we live right at the beginning of a big uptilt toward the mountains and somewhere between 15 minutes and 40 minutes (depending on the day and the direction) drive brings us above the clouds and into brilliant sunshine. The improvement in our moods is reason enough, but sightseeing is entertaining too.
3. Finding love all around. (Once you start looking for hearts, you just can’t stop seeing them).
4. Skiing. There’s barely enough snow and it definitely isn’t a luxe resort, but there’s sun and things to witness both scenic and amusing.

Not so much snow but more than enough scenery

5. Running. Remember I said it was cold? Yep, sometimes I looked like this; I wouldn’t have been able to keep it up without these:
And this sweet reward might have helped too:

Christmas beer, Christmas tea
Alas, sometimes this happens:

Whoopsies!
Sadly, tomorrow means back to work and back to routines, but I’m going to try to hang on to the last shreds of the holidays by focusing on the sparklies.