Well, I'm ready to close the book on 2025.
At least my December went better than the one last year. Car is intact, nobody got hurt, I fought off the sniffles a few times, but I'm pretty much okay. I'm gonna miss this year. The number, that is. I like it when things are in multiples of five. After that, the math gets trickier.
Without further adieu, one last entry to close out the year:
Here's the box it came in.
And the socks that came with the meal. I got the blue ones! They came in four colors: blue, green, red, and yellow. At least I got one of the colors I wanted. I would've loved green, but blue goes with a lot of what I wear. And at least I didn't get the yellow ones.
And it snowed not once
But twice this month!
We didn't have a white Christmas, but more of a white-adjacent Christmas. And thankfully neither time hit while I was at work and melted relatively quickly.
We also lost a few good people this month, like Rob Reiner and his wife.
Bob Burns, famous "monster kid", and "trainer" of Tracy the Gorilla from Filmation's Ghostbusters show.
Anthony Geary, who played Luke (of Luke & Laura) on General Hospital. But to me, he was Philo in UHF.
Betty Reid Soskin, the Country's Oldest Park Ranger
The woman who famously botched the restoration of that Jesus painting.
Jim Ward (Doug Dimmadome)
and Jeff Garcia (Sheen from Jimmy Neutron) dying on the same day.
And what shocked me most of all, Adam The Woo.
I watched his videos all the time years ago, but sadly I hadn't kept track of him in a while. He just got back from Disneyland Paris and uploaded a video about his neighborhood the day before he passed, so this was a real sudden one.
I forgot if the Nickelodeon Studios video or the River Country one was the one I saw first, but I was hooked immediately.
He dared to go places where the rest of us wouldn't (or shouldn't) and ultimately got banned from the parks for it. Disney eventually lifted their ban, while Universal...did not. It's a trip reading that people watched him "when they were kids." Just speaks to how long Youtube's been around (turned 20 this year!), and how long Adam's been doing his thing. There's so many travel vloggers now, especially Disney ones. Frankly, they're all copying him, and I'd say a fair amount of them would say the same thing. Or at least admit to being inspired by him. He was just that good, and a unique voice has now left us.
I was hoping to meet him someday. But alas. No more daily uploads is what's getting to me most of all.
But on a different note: Christmas came just the same!
The tree! The ornaments were in a bit of a hodgepodge this year (it was mostly put up by the time I got home from work one day), but you gotta admit it's charming as hell. There really is nothing like a lit Christmas tree at bedtime on Christmas Eve.
Besides the requisite gift cards and new barbecue sauce from my favorite local place (seen in just about every other Christmas entry), my main gift this year were new portfolio books! Perfect for someone who goes to a lot of conventions. I recently started investing in 5x7 books too, since I've picked up a lot of smaller prints and art pieces over the years and the first book filled up as soon as I got it.
I'm 38 and have no immediate family left besides my parents. I don't ask for much anymore. Leftover Christmas money went to new work clothes and shoes. If anything, my dad was the one that made out like a bandit this year, getting lots of new shirts and a new pair of glasses.
My annual advent calendar of scratchers netted me thirteen bucks and a free Take Five ticket this year.
I did, however, get an Amazon gift card and immediately spent it on getting this Solus Prime figure. The Transformers sets that haven't been geared towards the little kids have had some pretty good releases, with the Age of The Primes line releasing figures of the Thirteen Primes for the first time. I already have Micronus Prime and Megatronus Prime, and I'm waiting on finding a good price on Alpha Trion (who for once finally got a figure that looks like how he did in the G1 Cartoon) before I bite the bullet on that one. My shelves are too full of Funko Pops or else I'd be investing more into these toys.
Mattel's been finally playing nice and allowing Hot Wheels and MOTU collabs. These two were, uh, a bit pricier than I was expecting but I was NOT gonna let them slip through my fingers.
I've had Legends Z-A since it came out, but I bought the DLC on Christmas with the Nintendo gift card I was gifted. Naturally, it's dominating what spare time I have. Was $30 a bit too much for glorified time trials? Maybe, but it got me the shiny charm not fifteen minutes into playing it, and that's worth it in my book.
And I KNEW that there was a new Christmas Vacation themed chocolate bar this year, but it was never put on the shelf at my job for whatever reason. And I bet the reason wasn't good, so I didn't buy it.
For the best, really. I never got around to eating the one I got last year. There was no expiration date on it, but I wouldn't trust anything I hadn't opened from Last Christmas to begin with.
As for New Year's plans? For once, I actually got started on this blog entry early this time, because I am NOT spending another NYE trying to bang out an entry before the ball dropped.
And apparently they're gonna drop the ball twice this year, the second time to mark the 250th birthday of the USA. That totally doesn't sound like an omen at all.
Once again the Honeymooners marathon doesn't start til 12:30, but I at least have that to look forward to.
Until then, I'm gonna watch Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper get progressively drunker until the ball drops.
And I got New Years Sushi once again and got way stuffed. Not pictured: everything else I ate.
So what will 2026 bring? Well, hopefully something better. But the march of the passage of time is something I keep thinking about, and I don't like it.
If things go well, we'll be all back here ringing in 2027.
