{"id":43358,"date":"2023-12-31T16:52:56","date_gmt":"2023-12-31T22:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/?p=43358"},"modified":"2024-01-02T17:28:33","modified_gmt":"2024-01-02T23:28:33","slug":"december-2023-highlights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/december-2023-highlights\/","title":{"rendered":"December 2023 Highlights"},"content":{"rendered":"

(It\u2019s January 2024 and I\u2019m backdating a post for each month that I have not blogged. Please scroll down to see the new posts starting with the July 2023 highlights)<\/p>\n

(Post 248 of 263)<\/p>\n

December was dead quiet and I just needed a proper break and staycation to get caught up things, including spending a couple of days doing house-closing related things. We thought we’d manage to close by the 15th, but alas.<\/p>\n

The most exciting thing I did in December was visit the new La Plancha park, which M\u00e9rida claims will be the lung of the city. Ha! Just another huge concrete area, but maybe the trees will grow. It does have some lovely walking trails and a kids’ skate park is always a good idea. The lake is also lovely. It’s a beautiful project, truly, but I wish city planners understood how much replacing concrete with greenery would help this city.<\/p>\n

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I had trouble with Ubers that day, so I ended up taking a bus home, using the bus pass I’d bought way back in July! The new buses are linked to an app. You can check what routes to take and also see when a bus is coming your way. I took the bus again to Costco later in the month and was able to walk out my door, go a couple of blocks, and get to the bus stop just as my bus was pulling up! This ability to time my rides will definitely increase my bus usage as I stopped because the waits before were too long. I like that these new buses allow you to transfer to another bus at no charge, which must be a huge improvement to folks reliant on the old system of having to pay for each bus. These new routes will soon link up with the newly inaugurated IE-tram system. Within the next year, I should be able to walk 15 to 20 minutes to a tram station that will take me straight to La Plancha.<\/p>\n

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Alma is so droll.<\/p>\n

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Dodger is so sweet.<\/p>\n

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For Christmas, I made a delicious ham from local vendor The Sausage Lady as well as a cauliflower gratin (recognise the dish?) and some fabulous coconut sugar and cumin glazed roasted carrots..<\/p>\n

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I had an appointment with a trichologist in early December to confirm that my alopecia is genetic and not caused by an autoimmune condition. She confirmed as much and was really impressed with how well my hair has responded to Minoxidil, so she recommended I add another product, Nourkrin, to fill in the crown now that the the back has come in and I don’t have a huge bald spot anymore! She was shocked by how dated is my knowledge of alopecia and said she’s convinced I’ll have a full head of hair by next year… The top is still pretty spare (although it has so much body it can be styled to cover the thinner areas), but check out the back! I got a haircut just before vacation, so this is only a month to go from collar length to pony length. I do plan to get it all chopped off, but my hair dresser is on holidays for another week.<\/p>\n

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In that last photo, I was on my way to bowling. I’m hoping to have time for bowling again now that I’ve completely shaken up the Pilates routine. I’ve changed studios and am taking group classes, offering me a lot more flexibility. My vacation and “sick days” in October sadly caused issues at the last studio and if missing four classes total all year was such a big deal, I knew I needed a change for 2024 as I have a longer trip planned. I’m back to an evening Pilates routine and need to close out this post so I can make dinner and head out in an hour for my first class of 2024!<\/p>\n

I will continue with at minimum these highlight posts until I have completed the promised 263 posts. I’m not sure what will become of the blog after that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(It\u2019s January 2024 and I\u2019m backdating a post for each month that I have not blogged. Please scroll down to see the new posts starting with the July 2023 highlights) (Post 248 of 263) December was dead quiet and I just needed a proper break and staycation to get caught up things, including spending a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[895],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-merida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43358"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43374,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43358\/revisions\/43374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}