My festivities have ended early this year, and I’m now back at work — but with the benefit of a restful holiday, and a relaxation of other commitments to come over Christmas.

And, overall, a nicely productive fortnight. In this one, I have:

• Got to sleep 1 hour and 11 minutes after midnight on average, for 7 hours 27 minutes of typical sleep. The holidays have helped with this, for certain.
  • But I’m also trying out a clock radio — not so much as an alarm, but as a distraction to keep me off my phone while getting dressed. So far it’s seeing me arrive at work (and therefore home for dinner) about 10 minutes sooner than previously. Early days yet, but promising.
• Worked on 9 evenings’ worth of projects:
  • Four bits of D&D prep,
  • Three chunks of discussion for a potential Pathfinder campaign after this one,
  • One evening of work on my budget,
  • And one small piece of poetry.
• And I finished reading or watching several things:
  • Ghost Legion, by Margaret Weis. This is the book I kept thinking I’d finish and not managing — not that it’s bad, but somehow I couldn’t manage to get back to it. But I read just the last page of this years ago, and I’ve always wanted to see how it got to [spoiler] the last of the paladin-like Guardians, defying an apparently-benevolent god.
  • Uprooted, by Naomi Novik. Between premise, setting, detail, and the subtle-but-terrifying villain, I couldn’t help but finish this.
  • And Wicked (Part 1), which I saw with family in the cinema. The musical Wicked is lighter than the book, and I thought this was going to be lighter still. But actually the film uses its extra detail (and length) to bring a lot of book elements back in.
    I’m curious to see the second half, as I think I spotted this one foreshadow a different ending to the musical.

D&D this week was (possibly) the last session this year, and a few of us were a little tired and stressed, but not enough to cause issues. I want to focus on my framing a touch more, as I had a few combats run longer than they needed to; and I did put my thumb on the scales of plot once or twice.

But overall it went well enough, with a nice cliffhanger to follow up on next time.