#WeekendCoffeeShare – Hello December 2023

Published on by Yinglan

Greetings! Thank you for joining me this Saturday, please come in.

Can you believe it’s December already? My goodness, where has the year gone?

I feel like I’ve spent most of November shopping as just about all the items I wanted had a sale throughout the month. I have no idea whether I got a good deal. I’ve never been the kind of person who does much calculations on how much I save, the only number matters is the amount I need to fork over.

I ended up spending about $150 for an indoor seed-starting system, which included a 5-tier shelf, 6 grow lights, and 2 heat mats with temperature regulators. For other gardening supplies, I bought some extra heavy duty trays, humidity domes, and special pots to experiments on indoor seed starting carrots next years. Carrots have always been one of those tricky crops that doesn’t like their roots disturbed but they don’t always germinate when you scatter the seeds in soil either. An expert gardener recommended these pots so I’m going to try it.

I also got a new phone in November and had it for about 24 hours before needing to return it after finding out it’s incompatible with my service carrier. I was going to wait until January but my current phone’s battery has been struggling for a while now and with my road trip coming up where I will use a lot of Google Maps, I don’t know I can have a phone that needs to be charged every 2-4 hours.

I also found out Samsung no longer supports my phone as it feels the Galaxy s10 product line has reached the end of its life despite my s10e is still very much alive. Yesterday, I finally gave in and got a new phone (s23), which is currently on its way. I really hope this phone will last me just as long.

The first snow storm happened in November – on Thanksgiving, to be exact – though there wasn’t any accumulation. It snowed again yesterday and it’s supposed to snow all weekend. As I was writing this post last night, the road with white with snow outside. The weatherman predicted around 2-4-inches of snow this weekend.

Oh, I totally forgot! I finished the puzzle. I started it on Wednesday, November 21 and finished it on Wednesday, November 29. It is now glued and sealed. I will go get a frame once the snow stops. 6-year-old me would had been proud to see this completed, even if it meant waiting nearly 30 years.

I’m really looking forward to December this year, for some reason. It’s usually my least favorite month of the year as I’m usually stuck at home during Christmas.

There are so much to look forward this year. For starters, there’s the road trip, which, of course, there’s a 50% chance of cancellation depending on the weather, not depending on mom. I’m watching the weather and praying that it won’t snow before or on the 22nd of December. Mom is still actively urging me to stay home and not go anywhere. If the weather does ruin the trip, then I’ll just stick to somewhere local but I’m determined to go somewhere during the holiday break.

I’m also looking forward to the start of mom’s trip to Japan, which is in less than 2 weeks. I’m sure I will be confused at first because mom’s presence has been like a constant beating drum, her absence will be like a break from that consistency but I’m looking forward to it though – all the wonderful things of being an independent adult like cooking, being an adult, and savoring the luxury of getting to sleep in without being woken up at ungodly hours.

Before all of that happens, there’s the company party on next Thursday. I had fun last year and have no doubt I will have fun again this year.

#weekendcoffeeshare is hosted by Natalie of Natalie the Explorer. I appreciate you stopping by. Until next we chat. 🙂

24 thoughts on “#WeekendCoffeeShare – Hello December 2023”

    1. Well, my indoor seed starting system will be just a 5-tier metal shelf in my garage with lights. I won’t play with it until middle of January. Right now, it’s mostly a shelf for storage.
      I agree, if a phone works, why spend the money? I am mostly upgrading my phone for its battery life. It’s not a good thing when a phone battery dips below 30% 3 to 4 times a day.

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  4. Oh – and you forgot to mention your huge success at Marsha’s story chat last month. You did a great job delivering a powerful story.
    I sigh every time I think about upgrading a mobile phone.
    Mine is on a company provided plan but there are still 3 other family members on our family plan and each time we have to upgrade (“have to” is key because we user ours until they’re nearly dead) I end up spending most of a day at the phone store while some 20 year old works his or her magic in getting most of everything migrated across.
    I feel your pain with Samsung and weakened batteries which they’ve only made worse by no longer having easy to change-out batteries – so when your battery dies, it takes the phone with it.
    Arrrg!
    On the other had, I gave you two thumbs up for not joining the dark side with our apple congregation members – – – 😀

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    1. Oh absolutely! I can’t forget that but I kinda ran out of words. One can only put so many words on a post before losing readers. I applaud those who can put out 1000+ words posts and still attract readers. I’m afraid my blog’s not at that level that.
      This will be the first time upgrading my phone since I got my first smart phone in 2019. I, unfortunately, don’t have the luxury of free upgrades as some of my coworkers do. So I have to use the phone until it’s almost at the end of its life.
      I agree, it is a pain that we can’t just take out the batteries when a battery goes bad and it’s not just phones these days, laptops are the same. Changing a laptop battery is such a daunting task nowadays that even though I recently bought a new battery pack for my laptop, I haven’t dare pry open the back and replace the battery.
      Haha! I have been loyal to Samsung from the beginning as it was the only phone and tablet with expandable storage. I still can’t believe they took it away with the newer phones. It’s forced me to have to fork over $50 more to get the 256 GB version as opposed to the 128 GB.

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      2. I’ve been told renting those cell tower is expensive but deep down, I know that’s lie. They just want our money and we don’t really have a choice as we are heavily dependent on our phones these days.

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      3. Yep – I think you are correct – painfully so.
        Hey – I hope you check out my coffee share this week. I took on an intro to a public chat bot named ChatGPT with some examples including one short story critique. I’m just learning this stuff but it’s eye-opening and given that you just scored big with story chat – you might be interested to see what this chat bot would return if it critiqued “The Circle”.
        Blessings !

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  5. The sales around Thanksgiving are all an illusion. I use to work at a shopping mall in college and I saw the prices of shoes and clothes and big banner sales all throughout the year. When November rolled around, the sales were just like all the other times throughout the year. I think the Black Friday magic were those doorbuster events — getting up really early in the morning waiting in line to get that gift card to buy that big screen TV and other large ticket items.

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    1. In malls, I have no doubt that it’s an illusion. I’m more of a coupon person and most of the stuff I bought this year had coupons attached. So I think I got somewhat of a deal.

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  6. That puzzle looks super hard! I love the winter look at your garden. I look forward to seeing how well your garden purchases work out. Have a great vacation. Merry Christmas this evening, Yinglan. Xxx

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      3. If only we could wrap you up in some kind of a loving bubble, transparent, so you could function, but able to protect you from painful jabs. I’ll be praying for that, Yinglan. xxx

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