Family Flying Off

After a very busy nine days, my family, or at least some of them, are flying back to the States having been here for nine-ish days. It's been very full on. Mostly fine. My family isn't really into doing anything. Most of their time here was spent sitting on the sofa. But M got to spend time with some of her family, which we are on rather short supply of, and she loved it. So that was good.  It cost me a lot of money, which wasn't so good. I did a sense check in an online forum I frequent and perhaps my expectation wasn't right that guests should pay for their way. But I ended up shelling out a lot for almost all the food to feed three additional adults for two meals a day, plus TDay itself (minus the turkey which my dad covered). But... money makes people nuts. I'm not thrilled it cost me a lot to have a good time with family for a week, but, it is what it is and a good time was had by all. So there you have it.  And we had the extra bonus of it being the first night of Chanukah last night, so we got to celebrate that too which isn't typical but was also very nice.

I was hopeful that things were slowly getting into some sort of normal pattern where Covid was with us but manageable, and then omicron hit the scene. I'm glad the family is headed home today because more restrictions seem inevitable and have already started. I have students coming in two weeks and we have no idea what the situation will be then. Everyone is feeling a bit anxious and that's fair. My booster is scheduled for the 24th of December, so after the students go. If I feel crappy, that's fine seeing as we don't celebrate XMas. I would just like to get it on board.

In the meantime, the nights continue to be longer. The weather is cold. Work is alright. I'm sad that my family is gone. Even though they are a pain in the ass a lot of the time, it was nice to have them around and spend time with them. Especially this side as I haven't seen them for two years. Hopefully we can make it to the States in the summer, but it's so hard to know.