The month-long holidays for December are: National Pear Month. Some are for important causes, some are to make you appreciate things you may take for granted, and some are just for fun. Not much this time. I love pears, though.
My Jewish calendar features 2 menorahs this time. I should say technically hanukiyah, which is the specific menorah used for the holiday. Menorah just means lamp. The one for Hanukkah has 8 branches and one holder for the shamash (helper or leader) candle. Usually the one for the shamash is raised up more than the others and/or is in the middle. A regular one has 6 branches and one holder. So, there is a difference. Each night for Hanukkah we light the shammash and another candle with it. They're really beautiful by the last night. Since my mom used to work for a Judaica shop, she collected a lot of them. Some were free, and some she bought discounted from the shop. Free if they had some minor flaw, like some branches were slightly bent. She and I would sometimes light a bunch of them on top of the piano. It was glorious seeing them all lit up, although it was pretty dangerous, too. When I do it myself now, I usually use one. Sometimes 2 on the last night. I have so many different ones that I inherited from her. I've been using a more traditional one the last few years, but it only uses Shabbos candles, not the slimmer Hanukkah ones. A couple of the branches are bent, too. It's quirky, yet impressive. People can see it more from the outside than the others. We're supposed to have it be seen, so it works. Anyways, one of the ones on the calendar is made out of copper from 1900. The other's iron from 1935. They don't say where they're from, unlike many of the other artifacts in previous months. However, the museum is in Amsterdam. They might have come from there. Interesting to see such old ones.
The elements calendar features tin this time. They talk about how tin soldiers were almost never made of pure tin. Tin-lead alloys were usually used. Many things called tin don't actually have tin in them, and it's come to mean any sort of thin sheet metal. They show a tin soldier that is 99.99% pure tin. There's a gray tin allotrope growing on a piece of metallic tin. A piece of the mineral cassiterite (tin oxide) from Bolivia. Lead-free solder, which is mostly tin. And, finally ingots of pure tin. Interesting.
Went to a family friends' place for Thanksgiving. We usually go there. This time it was my parent and I, the 2 hosts, and a work friend of the hostess. I was told there would be 6 of us, so that surprised me. They usually have a sizable crowd for their holiday dinners/parties. (They also host parties for New Year's Eve, sometimes Hanukkah, and a seder during Passover.) For the last couple of years, it's been noticeably smaller. Anyways, I've met their friend before at previous dinners. She's pretty nice and open-minded. They only have one dog left. The other passed away not that long ago. I miss that one, too. They were both big and really friendly. I couldn't eat the green salad we brought, since I'm trying to stay away from pain as much as possible. (Roughage like things scratch up against the scars in my colon. Fun fun.) We also brought a berry/grape salad. Didn't add anything to it, since I'm not familiar with fruit salads. My parent wanted to add whipped cream, which is apparently a thing. I just think fruit is usually good by itself. Like nature's candy. I technically wasn't supposed to eat the berries because of the seeds. I did anyways...The host smoked the turkey, like usual. There was gravy, homemade stuffing (a bowl of it without chestnuts for me), salmon for the person who doesn't eat turkey, cranberry relish (I don't like it, so they usually have the canned jelled stuff for me), cookies, and pumpkin pie. They forgot about a cooked green vegetable, which I probably could have eaten in place of the salad. We played a game of Trivial Pursuit, which is like a tradition there. It used to be very binary with the men against the women. Acknowledging me, and realizing it wasn't the best thing to do anyways, they stopped splitting us up like that. This time it was the 'away team' vs the 'home team'. 3 against 2 isn't bad. If it was with genders in general, I would be by myself and probably wouldn't have gotten very far. (The host would have been too, but he's relatively good at it.) We were in the lead for a while, but the 'home team' won. Sadness. The only thing that I didn't care for was when the hostess was talking shop with her friend for long periods of time. (They both work for OC or Olympic College.) They wanted to share and explain what they went through and such, too. At first it was interesting, then I started to get sleepy. After a while, I kept catching myself before falling asleep. If that was the only down part, that's pretty good.
Sunday was the start of Crohn's & Colitis Awareness Week. The only things I've done for it are added a frame to my fb profile pic, filled out an infographic on my experience, and shared both to Instagram as well. I've talked about my experience often on here. One thing that's surprised me is that you can still suffer symptoms while in remission. It really depends on how much damage it caused before going into remission. People tend to think in order to be in remission, you must not have related symptoms. Also, there's a high possibility of getting another autoimmune disease eventually with it. I apparently have another one, but they (doctors) don't know what it is yet. So, that's a fun thing, too. There isn't a cure for colitis. This can be hard for many patients to come to terms with. They'll have to deal with it for the rest of their lives. While in remission, it doesn't actually stop. The disease has just gone down to an unnoticeable crawl.
Finished watching The Truth Seekers. It's a Singaporean private detective drama. They solve cold cases. I liked it a lot. I didn't care for the added tension towards the end. Plus, the love triangle thing...The characters were likable and felt like family. They left it wide open for another season. I'd so watch it if there is one in the future.
Started watching the 2nd season of High Seas recently. It's a Spanish mystery series set in the 40s on a luxury cruise ship. The cinematography's great, they have elegant costumes that would have been popular at the time, and a lot of aspects are accurate to the way things would have been. The acting is occasionally over-the-top. Very interesting story and kind of cool that most of it is from the perspective of 2 sisters. This season seems a little weird. Ghosts might be involved this time, although it might all be an act by someone they rescued recently. That someone is apparently lesbian or bi. Not sure if that's good representation, considering she could be stealing and a fraud posing as a medium. She kissed one of the sisters that believes her. As far as they've shown, the sister is straight, and recently got married to the owner of the ship. She could be bi...She seemed to like it. They were hinting that she'd do something like that with how touchy-feely she was with her. This season isn't long, and I'm already halfway through it. It'd be interesting to see how it goes. The 1st season was mainly about mysterious murders and the sisters' long-thought dead father. I wasn't sure there would be another season with how the last one ended, so it's been a pleasant surprise.
I finished Duolingo's Dutch course. I was thinking about going back to modern Hebrew next, but their course for it is awful. I can't seem to find any good apps for it, either. I thought about Yiddish, but that's hardly available anywhere. Although, I did read that Duolingo is creating a course for it and might be out in a few months. Started Duolingo's Scottish Gaelic course today. It's really new. Newer than I thought. Came out a week ago. There hasn't been any speaking lessons yet, but I'm at the very basic stuff. Some of the other languages didn't have those until a few more units in. They have a lot of different native speakers, which is good to get more of a feel to how it sounds. I knew the language was a little odd, but really looking at it brings that to light more. It's another language that my ancestors spoke, so I thought it would be good to learn that way. Not many people speak it anymore. There is an effort to change that, though. The course looks short, but maybe they're only showing me some of it, then once I get to the last checkpoint shown there will be more. If not, I still feel lucky to get a taste of it.
Finished editing Alliance: Dawn. Started editing Sweet Endless Terror. It's 12 short stories based on my nightmares. Went through the 1st story: The Head. It's the shortest one. 5 pages of the ebook and 8 pages of the print. I also didn't remember how short the ebook was. It's only 94 pages. The print is 255 pages. I formatted the print to be for a small book, so it makes sense. The difference is weird, though. Especially seeing them side by side.
Finished fixing the drawing of Junko's lines. In Photoshop, I added color to her skin, eye (she's winking, so only one is open), hair, shoes, and ears. They're not exactly the colors I had in mind, but they're not bad looking. I don't know much about color codes in Photoshop, but I'm looking them up as I go. I'll color in her skirt, socks, and shirt next. Then, I'll mess with shading. I have to remember to go a little darker with that than I did with Shadow.
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