obligatory first post of 2023

Hope everyone had a great holiday break because mine was pretty awesome. :-)

Prelude

For starters, there was a nice holiday lunch at Energous on the Wednesday before Christmas. We had lots of great Mediterranean food. One cool thing is we had a raffle this year. You had to dress up or otherwise show "Christmas spirit" to be elegible. I wore a Christmas-themed sweater a knit cap, and ended up winning a $100 gift card for Amazon. So that was nice.

Shutdown week

The break had a good start as we watched the new Batman movie on the 23rd. It was somewhat darker than most other Batman films. I didn't like it much as Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight series, but it wasn't a bad movie by any means.

Mom invited my cousin Connie and her kids Dean and Desiree to our house for lunch on Christmas Eve. She gave them her old art supplies after finding out Desiree was into watercolors. She and Connie both love art and immediately started to paint after lunch. Everyone definitely had a great time. Connie had to leave soon afterwards, but it was so nice to see her again so soon.

One nice thing about Energous is we shut down during the holidays. I forgot about this and still went to the office. Imagine my surprise when I found no one there. Oops. On the bright side, I can't complain about having three "extra" days. :-)

Mom wanted to go to WinCo Foods for groceries as everything there is usually cheap. Dad took us to the store in Tracy as that is the closest one to our home. Due to the recent food crisis, the stuff at WinCo had also gone up in price. I can't say I'm too surprised. Otherwise, this was an enjoyable day trip as we hadn't gone too many places lately due to the pandemic.

We later saw Terminator: Dark Fate on Blu-ray Disc after dinner. It was defintely one of the better Terminator films. We didn't do much on the 29th but did get to see Eternals the next day. Despite the critical reviews, I don't think Eternals was that bad at all.

New Year's eve

Our original plan for New Year's Eve was to visit our family friend George in El Cerrito as we hadn't seen him in at least three years. However, he's very conscious about COVID-19 and prefers not to have visitors. We of course respected his wishes. I also hoped to check out some New Year's Eve events, but decided against it due to the recent rise in COVID-19 cases.

Otherwise, things weren't too bad as we got to see Thor: Love and Thunder after dinner. I paused the movie about five minutes before 9 p.m. so we could watch the Times Square ball drop. We then continued the movie after the fireworks. I then played RuneScape and watched the countdown in San Francisco before going to bed. It's hard to believe 2022 was over.

I must admit I miss celebrating the New Year's Eve with friends. Our last New Year's Eve party — whether at our house or elsewhere — was eight years ago. Counting down the seconds in a chat room just isn't the same as doing it in person. :-(

A fresh start to 2023

New Year's Day started out with a nice morning hike. It's not often that we get such nice weather at this time. We later saw Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness on Blu-ray Disc. I definitely loved the special effects. Continuing the multiverse theme, the three of us watched Everything Everywhere All at Once the next day. Although everyone says Everything Everywhere was better, I personally liked Multiverse of Madness more. But that's just me.

2022 in review

On the whole, this wasn't too bad of a year. For me, the highlight is we got to see my aunt Cynthia and cousin Connie several times. It was great to see Cathy and her husband Andrew as well. As you can imagine, these reunions were long overdue.

However, the worst thing about 2022 is the current economic situation. Dad and I bought a bunch of stocks, and most have dropped in value. Of course, the war in Ukraine doesn't help either. Can you believe we still don't have world peace?

Another consequence of the current crisis is the increase in food prices. For example, even a modest meal can cost up to $20 or more. It's expected that prices will continue to go up throughout this year. Let's hope this isn't the case. Even without the pandemic, this puts a damper on things.

But the New Year brings new opportunities. On that note, my goal for 2023 is to improve my time management skills. I also plan to get my first skill to level 120 in RuneScape this year. Hope it's not too ambitious. :P

January 9 update: Didn't feel like making a separate post about this, but I just hit level 99 Herblore in RuneScape on my alt account Traductus. :-)

Currently watching: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness