Greetings from Brookside

I'm up late talking to someone having a mini-meltdown brought on by the limitations COVID has put on all our lives, plus a neighbor put up a Trump 2020 sign today -- less than a week before the inauguration -- after not even having had one before the election, and I can't help thinking this is a shout-out to out-of-towners that their house is a welcoming space for insurrectionists. I spent a couple of hours catching Machops for Pokemon Community Day (plenty of shinies, not sure the exclusive move is worth keeping), then we had lunch and went to Brookside Gardens, where there are snowdrops and camellias, plus the first apricot blossoms and plenty of geese: 

 

We had dinner with my parents from Clyde's -- I had a Beyond Burger, which was good, but the chocolate and peanut butter desserts were the best parts -- and watched most of the Packers-Rams game there, which went better than the game I cared about more, the Baltimore-Buffalo game, in which there were about 47 missed field goals because of the wind and it became obvious that all was lost when Lamar Jackson took a hard hit and left the game under concussion protocols. Then we watched the ice dance at the US figure skating championships, which was lovely and I mostly approved of the results (Madison Chock is a beautiful skater but I love Hubble and Donohue's "Hallelujah")!