Mid-year Update (not really Christmas in July)

 Well hello everyone.  It's July, and many of my compadres out there are doing Christmas in July things - sharing music, doing podcasts, celebrating the mid-season.  I'm not a Christmas in July guy, personally.  I have a Christmas tree up in my work-from-home-office space, formerly known as "downstairs", but it's just because I haven't bothered to take it down.  It is a vintage aluminum tree, so I kinda dig having it here, with various ornaments hanging from the branches.

So, this is really just a check-in post for my faithful readers.  

I last left you with my traditional Christmas Eve post, though in 2020 Christmas Eve was far from traditional.  I said that we would be doing things differently. That turned out to be quite an understatement, as we had a COVID Christmas here in the Bingle household.  One daughter was positive before Christmas, so she was quarantined in her room through the holidays.  My wife tested positive on the 26th, and another daughter on the 28th.  I and my son both tested negative on the 28th, and about three hours later started feeling some symptoms.  I retested a couple days later, and on Jan 3 got my positive result.  We didn't bother re-testing my son, as he had the symptoms so we presumed positive.  So all 5 of us living here were positive.

The good news is that we all had mild cases and recovered pretty quickly.  All of us had different symptoms to some degree.  Loss of smell is weird, I'll tell you.  That came late in the episode.  I picked up a very strong pumpkin spice candle and took a super, deep whiff.  Nuthin.  At all.  That lasted about 3 days for me before it started coming back (again tested with the candle).  My wife, 7 months later, still has some smell sensitivity issues, but weirdly it's things she'd rather not smell anyway, like she can't smell a wet, dirty dog.  Silver lining?

So we are all well, and we are all vaccinated.  I hope that all of you readers are also well and are taking the most effective steps you can to keep yourself and your loved ones safe.  

Plans for the blog this year are still in the 'thinking about' stage.  I'm sure that it will be a variety of Christmassy things, as usual.  Hopefully some shares.  Hopefully an interview or two.  Most likely some featured new music.  One good friend/amazing recording artist is releasing a new Christmas album this year, so I will be covering it for sure.  Beyond that, who knows?  These things tend to reveal themselves when the time is right.

That's it for now.  I am hopeful that Christmas will be near normal this year.  We adapted in 2020, with Christmas via Zoom, which in hindsight was actually kind of fun, but with the Ghost of Christmas COVID there in the room with us on Christmas day, our joy-meter was not at 100%.  Again, in hindsight, we learned new ways to celebrate the holiday, and how to be 'together' across multiple households and rooms.

Grace, Peace, and Love, everyone.