Today is the winter solstice – December 21, 2021. This is when the south pole of the earth is tilted closest to the sun and the north pole is farthest away due to the inclination of the axis the earth rotates around. Thus, in the northern hemisphere we have the shortest amount of daylight today while in the southern hemisphere, it’s the summer solstice and they have the longest amount of daylight hours. For the next six months, our daylight hours will increase daily – yay!

I haven’t posted lately as things have been fairly low-key around here. We attended a Christmas celebration at Kelly and Frank Burk’s house. We had good food, drink and great company for a fun-filled afternoon. They had a white elephant gift exchange and also a game played with dollar bills and Donna won the jackpot which she has used to make Christmas donations.

About a week ago, I found something on Amazon that seemed like a good idea. I’ve been kicking around the idea of adding a looper pedal to my guitar rig. A looper pedal is a foot-operated switchbox containing a digital recorder. You step on the switch to start recording as you play and hit the switch a second time to stop recording. With this, you can record some chords for a song’s rhythm, play it back through the amplifier and add a lead to it or any fills you want to layer over it as it plays back in a continuous loop..

I found a tiny pedal that was more than just a looper – it also had drum tracks. With this I could set up a drum beat, play rhythm over the drum beat and record it all to have a backing track for lead work. And this pedal from Flamma was inexpensive on Amazon. I ordered it and had it two days later.

It didn’t take me long to figure out why Amazon had these for such a low price. It was a low-quality unit – it was noisy, introducing static, hiss and hum to the signal and the drums were hard to program and set tempo on it. That’s what I get for basing a buying decision on price and a few reviews. I was able to return the pedal for a full refund just by dropping it off in the original manufacturer’s packaging at a UPS store. Amazon issued the refund within a day of me dropping it off!

I learned something else from this purchase. Although a looper is still something I want, the drum backing was something that’s really helpful when you’re playing music alone. I did some research and bought a much better drum pedal. I ordered a Beat Buddy Mini 2 from Sweetwater Music and had it two days later. This cost more than twice what the Flamma from Amazon cost and it doesn’t have a looper, but it’s a quality unit.

This drum machine is much more versatile and easy to set up. The drums aren’t just synthesized sounds – they recorded actual professional drummers playing various patterns and rhythms. It doesn’t crackle, hum or hiss either.

Last Saturday, Donna played in a tennis tournament here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. I went to watch and tried to take photographs, but it wasn’t working out too well. From the spectator area, the players on the courts were backlit by the sun and I couldn’t get to any other vantage point.

Donna and her partner won their match in two straight sets. Later, Donna went to a tennis club social hour dressed in her Santa suit and beard – I forgot to take a photo. But, she had this one on her phone with one of her tennis friends in Santa’s lap.

Donna has our place decorated for Christmas, so we’re lit up at night.

Donna is really spreading Christmas cheer by playing traditional Christmas songs on her clarinet with backing tracks on our patio between the entry and car port. The other day, a woman stopped by saying she had to find the source of the music she heard from two blocks away.

We’re remaining healthy and eating well. Here are a few dishes from the past couple of weeks. First up, Donna tried a new grilled chicken recipe for Asian-style chicken breasts with grilled bok choy.

A couple of days later, she tried a different take on chicken thighs, slow cooked in a crock pot with loads of garlic, carrots and white wine.

On Friday, I put a six-and-a-half-pound pork shoulder – a cut called pork butt – on the Traeger wood-pellet fired smoker/grill for about eight hours at 225 degrees. I wrapped it in foil for the last two hours, otherwise it would’ve taken about 12 hours to reach an internal temperature of 198 degrees and risk drying out at that point. Wrapped in foil, it retained moisture and reached 198 degrees relatively quickly.

The pork was cooked perfectly – the shoulder blade bone slid out of the meat easily and I pulled it apart with Bear Paw shredding utensils. Donna made cole slaw and corn bread muffins from a recipe she got from our friend Georgia Eaton in Maine.

The last plate is another chicken thigh variation – garlic butter chicken served over spaghetti squash.

As I said, it’s the winter solstice meaning we have officially reached the winter of 2021-2022. It was definitely winter weather last week and the overnight temperature here in the desert dropped into the 30s. The rest of the month looks like we should have overnight lows in the 40s and highs ranging from the low 70s today and tomorrow before dropping back into the 60s for the next couple of weeks. We may have rain for Christmas. I’ll close by wishing you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!