And what was left for the appalling year of 2021? Company, that's what. The Thursday after Christmas ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger's parents came for a visit, something we had worried they weren't going to do this year. They don't visit enough and we mostly accept that we just have to visit them more to make up for it. But this did make a chance to push us to clean the house a way we hadn't for Thanksgiving, which we spent with them instead of up here.
It also was another chance for a fire, and one to run all day. Even more surprising, Sunshine didn't get anxious and hide from it. This might be good luck; she had ensconced herself under the coffee table before we lit the fire and it's possible she didn't notice it starting. We would have another fire that she didn't freak out about, raising our hopes that she might achieve peace with the fireplace, but then one more attempt since then sent her into hiding behind the recliner for hours.
Her parents would not stay long enough for us to play Mice and Mystics; they ruled that out to start. In fact as I understood it they planned to only stay an hour, barely longer than it takes them to drive up here. But somewhere on the line they agreed to stay long enough to have lunch, and we ordered pizza delivered that would give us I think two meals' worth of leftovers.
They didn't stay long enough but they weren't likely to. We were at least able to show the most important decorations, and we can hope we'll coax them into visiting again soon.
You haven't seen enough of the Potter Park Zoo yet. You'll see.
More of the trees and ornaments made of non-flashing lights outside the closed refreshments stand.
And one more picture as we walk along the path orbiting that open field, the one that sometimes has had a layer of ice fooling us into thinking it's a pond. This year was clear.
A peacock illumination, one of two in the windows outside the bird house.
Trivia: Colonial troops raised from New Jersey fought Spanish troops in the Caribbean during the War of Jenkins' Ear (1739 - 1741). Source: New Jersey: A History of the Garden State, Editors Maxine N Lurie, Richard Veit.
Currently Reading: Miscellaneous comic books sent me by a friend.
PS: From my Fifth A-to-Z: Oriented Graph, in case you missed it last time around.
