This morning I was able to photograph this hummingbird at one of our feeders.

We decided to break up the pandemic routine a little and headed to Anacortes. I went to SeaBear for some Christmas shopping. Then we headed to Compass Wines with the intention of purchasing some cider and wine gifts. But what I didn’t realize is that they have developed a tremendous spirits section, and I brought home a couple of treasures for myself. Then we headed to the Shrimp Shack for dinner. It was definitely a pandemic experience eating in an open tent with outdoor propane heaters and a brisk wind. We had fish and chips, popcorn shrimp and coleslaw. Tom had a cider, of course.

It was all very good and definitely a break from our routine.

Once home I looked into my liquid advent calendar and found Absinthe. This is a lovely coincidence as one of my treasures I picked up was Cocchi Americano. I could never find this for my Downton Abbey cocktail adventure and so never had a true Corpse Reviver No 2 and Absinthe is an ingredient as well. So I was finally able to assemble the correct ingredients and make this authentic cocktail.

So I sipped on this while I decorated our Christmas tree ( which I had to cut and drag myself due to Tom’s knee injury) and while I baked chocolate chip cookies for our pigs (yes I am spoiling them rotten, but frozen cookie dough is cheaper than donuts).

My other spirits treasure is this:

I never thought I would see punsch outside of Sweden and even there it was tricky to find. A total score.

So Anacortes was good to us today and helped us not focus on our troubles.

P.S. Tom saw our doctor today who confirmed that it is a meniscus tear, as we suspected. So he is supposed to stay off of it for 2 weeks using crutches and pain medication. If it is not improving then it will be imaging and likely referral for surgery. It is going to be a long 2 weeks.