an eventful holiday season

I'm heading back to the office tomorrow as Christmas break is coming to a close. One nice thing about Energous is we shut down over the holidays. I don't believe I've ever gotten more than a week off since college. Although we didn't go anywhere due to the pandemic, this was one of our best breaks ever.

Getting into stocks

You may recall that Dad suggested we make some investments during the holidays. Because stocks are often volatile, there was much research to be done. I was a little tired at times because we had to collect a lot of data to put into an Excel file. We narrowed the list down to about 40 stocks after countless hours. Here's to hoping our hard work pays off soon. *insert rocket emojis*

A new laptop and an iPad Pro

Dad wanted another computer to store old emails and decided to buy a new HP Pavilion laptop. It has a 2.9 GHz dual-core processor, 16 GB of memory and a 500 GB solid-state drive. Because my father only needs it for emails, he decided to trade it to me for one of my older devices. Although I didn't need a new computer, this was an offer I couldn't refuse. :P

I also got an iPad Pro a few days ago. Dad got it for me so that I could check stock prices in real time. Compared to our older devices, the iPad Pro is much faster. I appreciate all he's done for me. Christmas was great this year, that's for sure.

Bread machine repair

Mom has a Sunbeam bread machine that stopped working after being taken out of storage in the garage. Dad and I took it apart and found that the belt had gotten brittle and cracked. We decided to replace the belt because the machine was in good condition otherwise. Installing it took a while because the Sunbeam 5891 is hard to disassemble. However, the good news is we were able to get the machine running again. So glad we didn't have to spend money on a few one.

RuneScape gains

Of course, there was time for RuneScape too. Having almost two weeks off allowed me to gain about 35 million total XP across all my accounts. I also obtained the golden party hat on my main account and two alts. It's too bad I didn't get one on Rs2 Ixfd64 due to time constraints. However, that's not a big deal because I rolled a green Santa hat from Treasure Hunter on that account a few days ago. Guess I can't complain too much. :-)

So yeah... Christmas was nice even though we mostly stayed home. Let's hope the pandemic ends this year. It's been too long since we went on a vacation.

In other news...

I'm getting my COVID-19 booster shot tomorrow at the local Safeway store. It's often reported that the side effects are less severe because it's only half a dose. Let's hope that's the case for me!

Currently listening to: Rondo No. 1 in D major, K 485 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart