Second doses, second tries

Saturday morning I woke up right at my weekday alarm time, and soon noticed that my toenail was bothering me. I got up to look for the nail file, and didn't find it, but Eric heard me and followed me downstairs, so I set him up with breakfast. I went back to bed, but not back to sleep.

Rachel had an appointment this morning to visit her onetime sewing teacher to pick out some fabric remnants. She came back with quite a few little bundles. Then she had a piano lesson. It's usually on Monday, but her teacher has a conflict, and Rachel has basketball tryouts this week, anyway. I ended up playing Minecraft with Lydia, building a very tall tower.

In the afternoon, the kids had their second vaccine appointment, at the school in Magnolia again. That went smoothly. We ran into the Wassinks, there. The boys are Lydia and Colin's ages, respectively. Nicole had previously arranged for Rachel to babysit them this evening.

Our next stop was 7-Eleven. Actually, Nicole stopped at the nursery near the gelato place and got a poinsettia. But Eric had requested Slurpees instead of gelato after the second shot, so we went back to the Avenue. But the 7-Eleven was temporarily closed. What?! We carried on to the Safeway parking lot to look for a Christmas tree, but we didn't find one we liked.

Plan B. We drove down the hill to the other 7-Eleven on Nickerson and got Slurpees there. Lydia opted to delay her gratification and get a milkshake with dinner, but the other three voted instant. We dropped most of the kids off at the house, along with the poinsettia, and tried a different Christmas tree sale down in Beacon Hill. It was a bit of a drive, but we found one there. It's not as tall as some previous years, but that makes it easier to work with.

After getting the tree set up, I did my Advent of Code puzzle, then Nicole came back with dinner from Red Mill, having dropped Rachel off to babysit. I was going to read after that, but Lydia asked me to play Minecraft again, and we finished the tower. It is eighteen stories tall. I expected to see a long way from the top, but that's not how Minecraft works. The top floors are cloudy, though.

Meanwhile, I drained the water out of the acorns one more time and squeezed them through cheesecloth, which got them pretty dry. I spread the damp meal on a cookie sheet and put it in the oven to dehydrate at 110 degrees. I'll check on them in the morning.