Our region had a snowstorm on the last day before the official start of winter … and winter has been proceeding accordingly. Huge snowfall predicted this weekend, so we shall see!
Onigiri after shoveling. Yummy pancakes and eggs by Nate.
The end of 2025 was like:
I blocked off my cube so I could honor a deadline:
Potatoes Au Gritty:
The last full moon of 2025 was the “Cold Moon”
Merry Cherry Christmas
The flavor of this Christmas, for me, was inspired by a birthday gift from a dear friend from 2024 that I finally opened. I made cherry blossom cookies two ways, original recipe and one with lower fat, whole wheat flower, date and coconut sugar.
Gifts, stockings, and dinner for 13 people:
My amazing gift: an espresso bar at home. I’ve been told we are better than the cafe scene in Princeton, a very high bar to clear!
I would like to note that due to health issues, I spent many months of 2025 unable to have eggs OR coffee. The fact that these things are currently in my life, in limited amounts, fills me with wonder and gratitude (also also eggs and coffee).
Baby Turns One
I also made a s’more brownie recipe that I am quite proud of:
Taking Myself on Dates
Even in the dead of winter, in the dark, in the snow, and trying to survive the relentless illnesses we experience thanks to daycare, I am cultivating a 2026 of in-person experiences and private reflections. And when I cannot leave the house because I am snowed in or coughing, I will read BOOKS. Of paper, whenever possible.
I’ve read enough about the ways the concept of a New Year’s Resolution is a setup for failure. But the life I want in the year ahead, and always, is very rarely online and ESPECIALLY avoidant of social media. Someone told me recently, “The most exciting things are happening offline.”
The week before Christmas I earned one comp day off of work, so I had a cozy cafe writing day.
This felt so good and restorative that I knew my soul needed more.
My gratitude is so vast I cannot fit it into words: My campus closes from Christmas Day until the next workday after New Year’s Day, and with these weirdo Thursday holidays this year, I essentially had two paid weeks off.
I loved my Winter Break this year. We hosted Christmas Eve for family and then a First Birthday Party for our baby on New Year’s Day. We gathered and smiled and played cards at our game table. I baked the most classic birthday cupcakes I could think of: Funfetti with pink frosting. And the Birthday Babe … would not eat it. Ah, well.
The way things shook out, there were two weekdays where daycare was open and my spouse worked, but I had the day off.
I took myself to one museum and one dinner with a friend on each of those. It’s been almost a month since those excursions and I am still riding high on that energy.
Date With Myself #1: The Museum of the American Revolution
I caught a free tour about Winter Scenes in the museum. They were quite brutal! I do recall the image of soldiers barefoot in the snow at Valley Forge, since they were so hungry they ate their own shoe leather.
I chose this museum to return to since I enjoy it and recommend it constantly. But specifically, I wanted revisit the exhibit on the Iroquois Confederacy. One of my 2025 reads was Mohawk Warrior Society by Karoniatajeh Louis Hall. It was a dense book, made up of collected lectures by the author in transcription. It took me five months to read slowly, but perhaps that was the best way to engage with the ideas and stick in my brain.
To be frank, I had never even encountered the idea of the Iroquois Confederacy until I first went to the Museum of the American Revolution a few years ago. In spite of my History minor. In spite of scoring a 5 on the AP American History test in high school.
I am fascinated by the ways the framers of the American Constitution modeled parts of our representative democracy on the Iroquois Confederacy. My education led me to believe that the framers were 100% influenced by the French Enlightenment and nothing else. But there were other influences and I wish to learn about them!
This is all part of my broader interest in imagining how society could be better. What is POSSIBLE. I read a lot of solar-punk. But I want to learn more about historical examples.
It was bitterly cold that day and I stopped into a cafe for a toasted sun butter and jelly sandwich that I still think about. What a comfort.
Date with Myself #2, Philly Art Museum and Special Exhibit Surrealism at 100
I left my Bucket List visit to City Lights bookstore in San Francisco with an art manifesto about Surrealism. This book certainly captured that Surrealism is a poetry movement as well as a visual art one.
But the Surrealism at 100 exhibit reminded me that Surrealism was a poetry movement first. And André Breton coined the term for the poetry movement!
Apparently Philly is the only American stop this exhibit will make. Another Bucket List experience.
I returned to work refreshed and energized.
At the end of my second week back at the office, I took myself on my First Self-Date of 2026: Lunch out with a notebook, then a 2 p.m. performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra.
I was officially there for Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony, and I credit an early childhood steeped in Disney’s Fantasia for my ability to imagine the imagery evoked by the style of each movement.
But there were so many treats at the performance: a tuba-heavy section where Principal Tubaist Carol Jantsch was highlighted during a John Williams symphonic piece (I heard the composer’s movie scores, like for Star Wars and Jaws and Indiana Jones, throughout). She came out for an encore and said she received special permission from Vulfpeck to originally transcribe “New Beastly.” Young lady in a white suit rocking out on a tuba live, with only a keyboardist and drummer for light accompaniment: I am also going to name this a Bucket List experience.
And Julius Eastman’s devastating Symphony #2. The 12-minute piece has a sinister and strained sound as it tells the story of falling in love and then separating. The composer delivered the only manuscript copy to this ex shortly before he died tragically in 1983. He was living out of his car when he wrote it. It sat in a drawer until 2017 and has only been performed in the last three years. Just unbelievable to be in a room to witness a live performance. (BUCKET LIST.)
Walking as Adventure
We had grandparent babycare on a Sunday and were able to grab lunch out, then walk 10,000 steps though it was cold.
I worked a Saturday event and earned time-and-a-half off. So here I am, writing in that same cafe that inspired my vision for 2026.
Laura Eppinger 