Hark! A cold!

Or at least, so I hope. Having been back in the motherland for over a month (I had an awful lot of "use it or lose it" holiday time accumulated), and socialised more in that month, even with the restrictions in place, than I have in the preceding eleven, it is not unexpected. At least I have a good supply of ART test kits, and yesterday's and today's were both negative. Omicron is here, but not yet widely prevalent (give it a week or two). No fever, and the scratchy throat is responding well to pseudoephedrine, so no justification for a PCR yet. I cancelled all appointments and spent the day reading, checking email, and drinking huge quantities of Ceylon tea and hot water, and will do another test tomorrow before going out.

Otherwise, Christmas with the family was nice, even with the restrictions on gatherings. I managed to find some extremely suitable gifts for my parents (hard to do, considering their age) and indulged myself with some online shopping, which I haven't been able to do for nearly a year. Book Depository will take a while to deliver, I expect, but shipping within Asia isn't too bad now, relatively speaking, so hopefully the water-based nail-polish from Ueba Esou in Kyoto will show up before I have to leave.

For in-person support shopping, I went back to my dancing-shoe shop, and ordered a couple of pairs of walking shoes from them, basically low-heeled practice shoes that look like Oxfords, with the felt soles replaced with rubber. They're really nice people, and times have been hard, and comfortable shoes for city walking are hard to find. A nice confluence of interests, in my view.