I’ve been a bit scarce around here and this will be my last post before Christmas. Since I plan to rest, spend time with my extended family, read books, go to the beach (hopefully), have at least one internet free day and possibly more, between Christmas and New Year, I will skip my usual Good Things post on the last Friday of the month and put that time towards my yearly tradition of posting 100 Things that Made My Year. With that in mind, I thought I would round up a few of the good things lately, but first I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas. I hope that you get to spend it with some people you love—or at least like a little bit.

Before we get to the good things though, I just want to mention how shocking and horrifying the attack in Bondi was. G and I were driving down Hotham St on Saturday (the area where a lot of Melbourne’s Jewish population live) and he mentioned how disappointed he was that the Jewish community festival their hadn’t run since October 7th. I can’t remember what time of year it used to happen but we noticed it the first year we moved into the area and had planned to go to it the following year. I replied that they were probably concerned about security, because the Adass synagogue which is not far from us was the one that was fire bombed by organised criminals paid by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Any security concerns have proven to be well founded. It makes me so angry that there is still this level of antisemitism in the world and that it is being fueled and propagated across social media and through hate preachers and neo-Nazis. Earlier this year kids from a school in the northern suburbs targeted students from a Jewish school with antisemitic insults while they were all on excursions to the museum—you can’t tell me they’re not hearing that in their homes and community. Then there’s the failure in the gun laws. Most reasonable Australians would be shocked that people in the city can legally own that many firearms, especially as a non-citizen. Thank God they didn’t have access to semi-automatic weapons. In another WTF moment last week a rampaging group of about 150 high school students on holidays trashed a Woolworths then congregated on the Mordialloc beach for a brawl. I seriously do not understand any of this!!!

I’m not sure what to do with all of this except to be decent, try to spread kindness and love in the circle I move in and to the people I meet throughout the day. I will always celebrate the good things.

Early December started with my birthday and the celebrations stretched out over three weeks. This was not by design, but was just the way things worked out as we tried to slot the celebrations between our other commitments and avoid having too many restaurant meals per week. I went out with my parents on my actual birthday, which was an impromptu, late addition to our schedule. We went to Bar Carolina in South Yarra. I had a crab pasta which was so good. Lovely big chunks of crab, instead of the small stringy bits you sometimes get. At one stage it seemed like the wait staff were having a dual picking the background music, with some dance music getting a guernsey, until it settled back down into more sensible background music.

We always try to celebrate birthdays with a family dinner and for mine we took the kids to a favourite of ours, Bounty of the Sun. It’s Japanese and is still good. Last week G and I went out to lunch to a new to us restaurant in Brighton called Henry’s. It is mainly Italian food, but it also has wood fired dishes. I had scallops and flathead fillets, both wood fried, and they were really good. We would like to go back and try a few more dishes.

We’ve also had a few extra gatherings, a going away dinner for a friend from running group (he’s an astrophysicist who is moving to Canada to work). We also had our traditional Christmas Relays followed by dinner at the pub. Teams are made up of four people who each run two legs of 1K each and there were about ten teams. I had my birthday lunch beforehand where I ate three courses and had a limoncello spritz so I didn’t want to push too hard and lose my lunch. I did manage to go under 5 minutes per K so I was reasonably happy with that. Our team came third thanks to some speedy guys doing low 3 min K’s. My daughter S has hardly been running, but threw out a lazy 4:20 and also had the fastest guy in her team and they pulled out the win. Part way through the second legs the sprinklers came on and drenched us all as we were running around the course.

Last Monday we had our Christmas celebration for our mainly music group. It was so good. The kids in the group at the moment are 0-3 years old and so funny. They just make you want to laugh. The parents have also built connections with each other, and I think they really appreciate the time to have some adult socialisation while the kids are playing at the end. It made me so happy seeing everyone there. One of the families gave each of our team of volunteers a cellophane wrapped package of homemade biscuits (ccokies for our US friends). I enjoyed mine over the week, they were yummy. After the session the team went for a hot drink at a local cafe.

E and K settled on their apartment on Wednesday and E had a few mates with the van from work to help move him on Wednesday night after work. We stipulated that everything must go, and he did a pretty good job. He just forgot a few things in the bathroom, including his toothbrush, but luckily he had his travel toiletries. K’s parents have been painting the apartment over the weekend, which will save E and K some dollars.

Saturday we went to the wedding venue (Immerse Winery in the Yarra Valley) for the food tasting. It was over lunch and K’s fears about there being enough food at the wedding were certainly put to rest. They have decided to go with the feast menu, which means entrees and mains are served into the center of the tables and everyone helps themselves to what they want. The desserts are roving desserts and they picked lemon meringue tarts and churros. I thought the food was really good, I think everyone at the reception should be happy.

We’ve had a number of doors open days and only one very hot day where we needed to shut the doors and put the air conditioner on for an hour or so. The other days over 30 degrees there’s been a light breeze that has been enough to keep the living area cool. We have also had some colder weather and Christmas Day looks like it isn’t even going to hit 20C which is annoying. I’m going to wear my dress anyway because we’ll mostly be inside.

We’ve also been watching Christmas movies, which is not something we normally do—actually I just remebered that we watched Hot Frosty last year. So far we’ve watched My Secret Santa, Elf, Spirited and Red One. They’re ridiculous but fun.

Have you been watching some Christmas movies? With all the activities, Christmas has kind of snuck up on us. How has your pre-Christmas schedule been?