Christmas
😌
In contrast with our other recent Christmases, this one was so low-key I had to remind myself it had even happened. Even so, in our quiet way we had plenty going on.
- Sunday we visited the black church my dad attends. It was energizing as usual. I wanted to take the worship band back with me.
- We didn’t go out for a movie this vacation, but we did watch A Christmas Story, which we hadn’t seen. It didn’t end up in our top ten, but we liked it okay.
- Christmas morning Abbie and Colleen joined us by Zoom from Tennessee. It was almost like they were in the room with us.
- I took a few nice walks around the neighborhood, a quick but interesting nature walk, and a long one at the local university with my dad.
- My college roommate Jason made the trek from Tyler for our customary Christmas visit—a meaningful time as usual.
- I made my newly traditional train trip home from the airport. Part of my route this time was unexpectedly confusing, so I spent a large part of the next day standardizing my directions for that trip.
My gift labels this Christmas were cards with the names written in Gregg shorthand in gold paint. I attached an alphabet key to the back so they could see how the spelling worked.
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Productivity
🤔
I decided to move my Gregg shorthand learning toward a diglot weave approach. I began learning Gregg out of curiosity and to reduce the physical work of writing, which is often how I draft my posts because it helps me think. Shorthand does help, but since I’ve only half learned it, it’s enough mental work that it sometimes contributes to procrastination. So I’m going to experiment with using longhand again with my own abbreviation system while substituting the Gregg words I’m more familiar with. Then outside of that I’ll continue learning Gregg to progressively fill in the gaps.
Nature
🙂
I explored a bit of the local landscape in Texas. I wasn’t into walking growing up, so I missed taking in some of the local sights. This preserve felt both familiar and foreign compared to my usual nature haunts. I don’t usually run across bare, stratified cliffs along stream banks.
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