Goodbye for now, Holidailies!

I see that Holidailies is going until January 2nd this year, meaning I have time to put another entry on the portal. We spent New Year's Eve at my sister's - well, we went out to eat and then went to her house, that is. She lives outside the city limits (of the town that we grew up in, which is one town over from where Rob & I live now). That means that her neighbors are free to set off all the fireworks they want, and boy, did they want to. I can't imagine how much money some of those people must be spending on fireworks - I haven't bought any myself since maybe 1985, but they can't be cheap. (I drove by some of the fireworks stands today and one had a big sign that said "LAST DAY" - I guess they close down until, what, Memorial Day or something?)

Oh, we watched One Battle After Another for our NYE entertainment - we saw it when it first came out, but my sister and her husband hadn't seen it, and I didn't really think they would like it but they were interested because it's gotten a lot of award talk. Predictably, my bro-in-law was not into it, as it turned out (he muttered something afterwards about it being "pro-antifa" - I mostly just pretend I don't hear it when he says that kind of thing) - my sister at least liked it okay, I guess. Rob and I both still liked it a lot, and since it's been, what, six months or so since we'd seen it, we were ready to sit through it again - it's like 2 hours and 40 minutes long, I just looked to see. (We still got home in time to see the NYC ball-drop.)

Happy 2026, y'all! Let's hope for the best!


Added:
OK, I knew that One Battle After Another was loosely based on Pynchon's Vineland - I was looking that up and one thing led to another and I ended up buying Gravity's Rainbow instead, as one does. I know it's one of those books that most people never finish, or it has that reputation, anyway. But I thought I would give it a go just the same. (What's one more book on the to-read list?)