Sunday Salon: Chicken Soup and Cookies

Dateline: Sunday morning, around 6:30 as I begin this, in the loft. I wasn't sure I'd post today, but I got a cosmic message yesterday which seemed to be telling me I should, and which I present as a Gratuitous Photo of the Week:

I get it! I'll post something!

Consuming: Water and honey-lemon Ricola cough drops, soon to be followed by Zicam and Mucinex tablets. I have been nursing a cold since Wednesday, and dinner has been a can of chicken soup for the last few nights (well, not the same can every night, of course–I stocked up). It's not that bad a cold–just enough to be annoying when there are things to do–but I'm trying to subdue it before the family converges this week.

Reading: My lack of progress with the books I was reading last week--
Someone Else's Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson and the essay collection Why I Read by Wendy Lesser–continues, I'm sad to say. With some time off this week, I hope to spend some more time with them, but considering what else is going on this week, I'm not making any lofty plans. I suspect I'll fall just a bit short of my book-a-week reading goal this year, but I can live with that.

I don't think I'm joining any reading challenges for 2014. I'll set a total-books reading goal for the year, but I'll be tracking it on BookLikes rather than GoodReads (and my full book collection will continue to be cataloged on LibraryThing).

Watching: All of our TV favorites have gone on holiday hiatus, so we've cleared out the DVR–that's a minor accomplishment right there! There will probably be some movie-going during the next couple of weeks, but I'm not sure what we'll be seeing just yet.

Listening: I finished One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson this past week, and since I'm only going into the office on Monday this coming week, that's probably my last audio for the year. I hope to get the review drafted shortly, but since I suspect many of us won't be reading a lot of blog posts for the next week or so, I'm not sure when I'll put it up. I'd have fallen even further behind on my reading goals without audiobooks this year, and I'm appreciating them more than ever.

Blogging/Writing: As I sad last week, I'll be getting to work on my year-end retrospectives and Books of the Year picks soon, but those posts probably won't go up until after January 1. It may be easier to make time for that than for reading this week, to be honest, but we'll see. There will probably be behind-the-scenes blog stuff going on around here, but posting's likely to be more sparse than usual. But we've all got other things to do than blog at this time of year, don't we?

Anticipating: The same thing as many of you, I suspect–good food, fun, and family time on Christmas Eve and Day.

Planning: We have just a few last gifts to pick up and wrap, I'll be baking cookies today (and making every effort not to add unwelcome ingredients from my cold!). Tall Paul likes his chocolate-chip cookies traditional, but I'll be making another batch with butterscotch chips and cinnamon added in for Chris and Kate. And Spencer can't eat any of them, so he'll get gluten-free brownies.

Gratuitous Photo of the Week #2

How's your weekend going?

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