I find it hard to believe that we have just closed out another month. February 1st marks the Pagan celebration of Imbolc - which is technically speaking midwinter - but I'm still trying to figure out where January went!
There were a lot of things I intended to get done in January, but when I look at the stacks of paper on my desk it would seem that I only scratched the surface. But that's not so unusual; most days around here are filled with more things than there is day to take care of them.
On the good news front, some months back I wrote about the possibility of losing an old family summerhouse because of new tax regulations in Denmark, but it would appear that - thanks to the investments by a couple of my better off cousins - the house is going to be saved!
That is a great relief for many of us in our family, because that house holds so many memories it is practically a time capsule of family history. I know a great number of us cousins would have been heartbroken if it had gone away.
Have I mentioned that I really don't like property taxes?
Except for a quick deep freeze, this January has actually been unusually warm. When we look at the mountains across the bay, there is considerably less snow on them than in years past. Even more strange, it is late January and the whole house heater hasn't come on in three days. That doesn't usually happen till April or May.
When I was taking out the garbage earlier today, I noticed that we actually have tulips starting to poke little leaves out of the ground. I worry that we're going to have another hard freeze which might not be good for them, but maybe we'll escape that this year.
I am very much looking forward to gardening season starting up again as I don't do that well with just being cooped up in the house all the time. A number of the older potatoes in our vegetable drawer say that spring is not far away because they are starting to set sprout! I actually find a bit of relief in that, because that means the grocery hasn't been spraying them with growth retardant.
Feeling a little disappointed that the crypto markets collapsed again in January after we had a hopeful end of December and a little ways into J
The new year. I even had a hope that our own Hive token was going to go up a bit and maybe at least get back to 50 cents but now we're back under 30 cents instead. Boooooo!
Looking back across my statistics - because I am, after all,a numbers nerd - one of the things I've noticed over the past four or five years is that the crypto markets have far more down days than it has up days. We may be up overall, but down days outnumber up days by about a factor of two to one. I don't know what it says about this whole ball of wax, but something about that makes me nervous.
That said, I am feeling somewhat positive about the new partnership between Visa and Transak that allegedly will enable people to go from crypto directly to a Visa branded debit or credit card. The more we can do to make this industry easier for people to use, the better off we are!
The weeks ahead will be mostly dedicated to my eBay and Etsy businesses as we are having particularly poor "cash flow" at the moment. All told, I'd rather be writing but I have to focus on where the money can best be found. To the extent there is any, that is.
Anyway, so far it has been a relatively inauspicious start to the year.
Thanks for coming by and have a wonderful remainder of your week!
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Created at 2024-02-01 01:20 PST
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