Merry Christmas 2020

Merry Christmas everyone! I know everyone is complaining that 2020 was the worst year ever. Not for me. It was another year of life! Fun! Adventures!

I turned 45 a week or so ago. On that day, we had our version of a Christmas party at work, and I got to take a live fresh pasta making course from a chef in Italy. It was really amusing as the chef belittled us and mocked our attempts. My pasta took 2x the semolina flour to become anything but a sticky paste. I rolled it out with a rolling pin and it seemed super thin to me, but by the time I cooked it, I could see it was still thick and dense.

The “sauce” was a fresh lemon juice, olive oil, basil mixture. We didn’t have fresh basil in the store so I used a paste. Jeff refused to eat more than a bite. I gave it a good go, but then tossed the entire pan in the trash and felt a bit ill for a bit. hahaha! It was good fun.

That night Jeff took me out for dinner, at a place of my choice. I picked the Aurora, since it is amazing, and just a couple blocks away to walk. And they make a great dark and stormy drink (ginger beer and dark rum):

Jeff had the bbq ribs and chicken dinner and I had the pulled pork.

We’ve been nice and consistently cold here with a good amount of snow, but we haven’t been down into the -40’s this winter yet. The river has been frozen since Hallowe’en. Locals made their own ice road this year, and now the Highways department has finally started too, making a wider crossing for heavy equipment to cross.

Last year I made Christmas baking for everyone, but I wasn’t sure how it would work this year with Covid. Would people want homemade food? Instead I scaled back and just made some for our friends when we were invited over to play trivia together (via the local radio station).

This is what our kitchen quickly looks like when I bake.

I made some peanut butter sugar cookies with the Hersey kisses on top. Except there weren’t plain kisses to be found in town, so half were peppermint – which turned out surprisingly well! Who knew peppermint and peanut butter could work together.

And then I made a ton of gingerbread men and we brought the stuff to decorate them so everyone could decorate their own.

Our friend’s baby Cerys and I took a selfie.

On Monday I had to drive down to Whitehorse again. Because I’ve had cancer and my Mom now has breast cancer, I had to do a mammogram. I went down in November for one and they immediately wanted me back and I kept putting off the appointments with so much frustration and anger. Driving to Whitehorse at any time, but especially in the winter, is a big commitment and time sink. I was told 60% of women here get called back for an ultrasound on their first one, and they said they messed up an image so I had to get the mammogram redone.

On Tuesday I had another mammogram, and then another one for a different view a couple hours later, and an ultrasound. They see something, didn’t tell me really what it is, and the doctor who reads them wants me to repeat it in 6-8 months to see if whatever they see changes at all. This is exactly what one of my other doctors warned me of. Extra frustration and tests once you open the door, but then I’d also have a set of baseline imagery. Whatever, I choose not to think about it for another 6-8 months.

In the meantime, it was a trip to Whitehorse. And it was in the -30’s Celcius when I left, hitting a low of -36 along the way. My truck did great. The heater is excellent, as long as I’m driving. It doesn’t heat up much at all when idling when I first start it. Not enough to thaw windows anyway.

It wasn’t until I turned at Stewart Crossing that I realized how stiff the steering was. I guess my power steer fluid thickens or freezes at that temperature!

I was driving on the Solstice too, our day of the least amount of sunlight. But we don’t get to choose our appointments, they schedule them and send us a letter in the mail with our appointment time.

The sun rose along my drive straight due south. It was a big bright orb that sat right on the road and was so blinding, but the hills and curves kept it off my eyes some of the time. Other times, my fingers kept it out of my eyes as I was peaking between them, trying to see the road.

After my 3 appointments on Tuesday, I was doing a big of shopping and decided to have a McDonalds lunch (when in Rome… err… a city). This Raven landed on my truck and really really wanted some fries.

He hung around for about 10 minutes and I caved and gave him some of my burger. Ravens are carnivores, right? Yeah I think so.

The second night I went for Domino’s again. I was so beat and hadn’t slept well the night before the appointments. The stores are so busy before Christmas. And there are stop lights everywhere in a city! I was watching Christmas movies in my hotel room and just really wanted to be home.

The next morning was stormy and almost mild in town, at -4C. But the wind chill was -22C. I got up early and was eager to get on the road. It was a dark drive for the first couple of hours, windy, with snow drifts. I’m so lucky that I don’t have to do winter drives much anymore. I was thinking of all the icky awful winter drives I’ve done before in Ontario and even in Nova Scotia to get to and from work.

It was a dark drive for the first couple of hours, windy, with snow drifts. I’m so lucky that I don’t have to do winter drives much anymore. I was thinking of all the icky awful winter drives I’ve done before in Ontario and even in Nova Scotia to get to and from work. It took me about 8 hours to get home.

The next day we went up to the Dome. At some point there has been a heck of a wind storm up there. The snow is blown off all the trees, and off part of the slope and the hill!

There was a mist or ice fog sitting over town, and all along the river. So it was dark in town, but up high on the dome we could even see the sun (which won’t hit town for a couple more weeks).

It even felt “warm” up there, or maybe it was just the sun.

We took a Christmas Eve afternoon selfie for ya with the sun!

These were at 3:30pm, if you want to see how high the sun got in the sky.

Jeff and I had a nice Christmas yesterday, and had a couple video chat sessions with our families. I made buns and we went to our friend’s family house for Christmas dinner. It was so nice! There were 10 of us for dinner. (The Yukon territory has no active Covid cases again, yahoo!)

I got all festive and had Santa flamingo earrings and a necklace of bells with LED flashing lights on them.

Today we’re cooking a turkey so we can have a couple good turkey coma naps and leftovers. I caught Sally looking a little Christmas drunk already this morning, sleeping on our Christmas mess on the table under the tree!

Jeff got me some really neat historical things for Christmas that I’ll tell you about later. First I have to go make a couple pumpkin pies and another batch of dinner rolls!