Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation and across the world. It is just past 4:30 a.m. in "The City."

The current temperature is 40° under clear skies. Today's high is forecast to reach 42°, albeit under partly-cloudy skies. There is only a Small Craft Advisory in effect until 5:00 p.m. today. We expect to see temperatures in the lower 40s for several more days, including Christmas Day.

The sun will rise today @ 8:14 a.m. and set later @ 5:13 p.m. Yes, the days are getting longer. Before you know it, we can put both the college and professional football seasons in our rear-view mirrors and get on to what is really important, Baseball!

Since I didn't blog yesterday, let me mention that I had a great time at Saturday's final Irish Jam Session of 2019, which was also the final session of the decade. We've been playing together, well sort of, for over six years. A large group of players played, told jokes, and sang to a sizeable audience. I took along my Holiday Cookies and they went over well.

I guess this is as good as any time to say that the the Lions and a QB who may or may not ever be heard from again, lost to the almost as woeful Denver Broncos, 17 - 27 yesterday afternoon. Last night, a team that should go unnamed, but which was supposed to challenge for the Super Bowl this season, Da Bears, looked even more hapless, as they lost to the Kansas City Chiefs, 3 - 26. Both QBs in the game, Da Bears Mitchell Trubisky, and the Chief's Patrick Mahomes, were drafted the same  year. Mahomes and the Chiefs are having a great year @ 11 - 4, while Trubisky and Da Bears are not even treading water with a record of 7 - 8. Nuff said.

I think that's why I watch Hallmark Channel™ movies. The outcome is predictable, man and woman meet, a misunderstanding occurs, they struggle through it and then they both end up in a small town pronounce their love and live happily ever after. What's not to like?

I was up early yesterday and used my Olympus DSLR to take some pix of our Christmas tree as it adorns our foyer. I used the basic photo manipulation software that comes with Windows 10™ and altered the pic to produce what you see here. Not great, but a nice first effort.

I cropped the pic, cleaned up the image, centered the photo, and changed the tone.

When we got up yesterday, Mary had latkes on the brain due to the season. So with my assistance, she made potato latkes that she served with vegan sour cream and homemade applesauce. My assistance amounted to grating the potatoes and reaching ingredients on the top shelf. I liked the latkes a lot. Mary says that she should make them more often. I agree.

We also did some indoor chores yesterday and took the fur-children for a walk before their dinner and ours. Once they were sated, we collectively made a vegan TVP meatloaf. We altered the recipe by using the food-grinder attachment for my KitchenAid™ stand-mixer versus our small serving food-processor. Into the pans, bake for a total of 45 minutes with a pause for some ketchup basting about 1/2 way through, and voila, vegan meatloaf. Great taste and no animals were harmed in the process.

Today, we have very little on the agenda. I hope to paint some and also read more. I've started another novel, James Patterson's 19th Christmas, written with Maxine Paetro, another in the Women's Murder Club series. I am also starting to read another book by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse, entitled Mycroft and Sherlock, a followup to the their first collaboration, entitled, Mycroft Holmes, a novel that I finished a couple of weeks ago. Both of the latter books are based on the popular books written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle about the fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes.

So, I hope to have time to do as little as possible today. Ciao for now.