Good News?

For my first screaming into the void current event post of the new year, let's have some good news...

Trump says he’s dropping push for National Guard in Chicago, LA and Portland, Oregon, for now. I mean, he's threatening to come back "when it's needed", of course. And this is only happening because the courts have been pushing back. It never should have come to this, but I guess people needed to see the authoritarian overreach before they really got it. But I'm going to be happy for this win anyway. 

Stephen Miller Is The New Republic’s 2025 Scoundrel of the Year. The next lines of this article are great: "He was counting on a nation of haters. He was wrong." I'm proud of us for that. Enough of us have pushed back that he was unable to fulfill his goals. Now, that's not to say that he hasn't done a lot of real damage, but it would have been so much worse if we did not fight back. And we need to continue to do so until he's being tried for his crimes. 

And finally, We Are Going to Win. I mean, I hope so. The bit under the headline, "Trump's revolution will fail, but we still have a long and painful road ahead of us," rings the most true. I look forward to getting past this era, but it's going to be a lot to clean all of this up and make sure it never happens again. 

Any other good news? Please link in the comments. 

Sleeve Progress and Falling in the Mud

Sleeve progress:

It's hard to tell by itself, so let's compare it to the sweater front:

Decent progress. But I think you can see why it didn't get done in time for Christmas. I still have a second one to make, plus assemble the thing, and then knit on a collar. 

I wanted to get more done during my time off from school, but then I fell... Well, it wasn't a big one, but I'll explain. 

Sweater Tracking:

• Starting the Sweater
• Getting to the Back
• Missed Deadline
• Distractions from Knitting
• A Month Late
• Inching Along
• Tracking the Growth
• Weekly Sweater Update
• Moving Right Along
• Good Progress
• Almost to the Interesting Part
• Plot Twist
• Not Worth the Effort

Falling in the Mud

New Year's Eve. It was raining. As I do pretty much every day, I took the dog out for a walk. The rain had let up a bit, so I figured it was a good window. 

Buttercup did her usual sniffing around, and she finally did her business a bit too close to the water. 

The scene of the incident

I went to pick it up when the mud underneath my feet gave way, and I landed on my butt and slid, heading straight for the water. Luckily, I managed to only land my left foot in, my right remaining in the mud. 

One shoe (the left) floated away. (I was wearing slides, because of course.) I removed my right shoe and tried to get some traction to get me up, but no dice. I slid more. And, of course, no one was around, so it was up to me to get up and get home.

(Buttercup hovered on the sidewalk, waiting.) 

I flipped over onto my belly, and attempted to find a way to inch up the bank. 

This is pretty much head on from where I was

I reached for those rocks. I didn't have enough to pull, so I wrapped my arms around that tree. From there, I was able to pull myself up to where I could crawl to the sidewalk and stand. 

I was barefoot and covered in mud. I looked back to see my right shoe had now also fallen into the water and was floating away in the other direction. 

I picked up the leash, and I took Buttercup home. We weren't far. I went in through the garage, and stripped out of my mud-caked pants. I went in search of my grabber/reacher stick, and once I found that, I went back out to retrieve my shoes. (I had put on another pair of pants first, though.) 

They were too far for me to reach, but a neighbor happened by, and he was able to get both shoes out of the water. 

So, no visible injuries. I'm only sore, mostly from the exertion of trying to get myself up. The mud came off my clothes in the wash and off my body in the shower. 

I just knew I was due for another fall. At least this one was minor in comparison to my previous. 

2025 Year in Review Quiz

2026 has started, but you haven't forgotten 2025 yet, have you? (I know we want to memory hole the year as quickly as possible...) 

How Well Do You Remember the Year 2025?

I got 13 out of 18. Not terrible, but not great. In my defense, I do not pay attention to soccer, and some of these pop cultural events totally passed me by. 

Warning, this is a bit U.S. based, so my non-U.S. readers might want to skip this. Let me know how you did in the comments. 

Promote Yourself

Happy New Year. 

Today is normally Thursday 13, but I posted it yesterday (as I wanted to do my 2025 in 13 posts in 2025), which leaves me with nothing for today. 

But a couple weeks ago my brother sent me a text. It seems that eldest nephew has started a Band Camp page. And I thought, why not link to a few things I wouldn't normally have a need to mention on the blog? 

So, first, eldest nephew's Band Camp. Don't let the photo fool you. He's actually 20. He did drumline in high school, and now he's making music on the computer. Take a listen. I'm sure he'd appreciate any support. 

Next, my sister-in-law started a podcast called Raven's Lore Cast. The previous link is the podcast on Spotify, and this one is the Facebook page. 

My brother, who has been kind enough to edit my little yarn-y YouTube videos, has made a couple of his own. (Well, besides the actual work he does, as he does actually work in television.) The Night of Zach. And The Night of Zach 2. 

I have mentioned my uncle's YouTube channel before, but as long as I'm doing this, I'm going to mention it again. He does animations that he posts every couple of weeks. 

And then, of course, my YouTube channel, where I make things out of yarn. I have a plan to knit slippers next, but I have not even started this yet. 

What sorts of things do you have out there on the internet? Post links in the comments. Promote yourself, too. 

2025 in 13 Posts

For the last Thursday of the year, I like to list 13 posts from the past year for Thursday 13. Alas, the last Thursday of 2025 was Christmas, and I kinda didn't want to do this on Christmas. So, instead I'm going to do this on the actual last day of the year (a Wednesday) and just link up with Thursday 13 tomorrow. 

1. January 24th: Scissor Emergency

About a seventh grader and the scissors he had to have. In the class I covered almost a full year ago now.

2. February 3rd: Mom

The post I wrote when my mother passed away. Suddenly. Yeah, 2025 was that year.

3. February 14th: Missed Deadline

In February, I started a long term assignment for a class that lost their teacher at the semester (she got a new job), and it was a mess. Like, missed-turning-in-grades mess. 

4. March 20th: That Day

A most unusual extra period assignment, but not in a good way. This was the period when the students were informed that one of their classmates had passed away. 

5. March 26th: Booked

Spring semester was kind of a tangle. This post kind of explains how I was in the middle of a couple longer term assignments. 

6. May 1st: Settling into the Long Term 13

And I ended the school year in an eleventh grade English class. In this post I talk about how it was going.

7. June 16th: Zombie Time

My main yarn-y work for the first half of the year was the Minecraft collection, characters from the video game that I crocheted for my nephews. This was the last one in progress. 

The Minecraft Collection with the nephews

8. July 11th: Missed Connection

The week of the 4th of July, I flew back to Ohio to visit my brother and family. On the way home, I got stuck overnight in Denver, Colorado. 

9. August 11th: Starting the Sweater

And for the second half of the year, my main yarn-y work was a knitted sweater for eldest nephew. This is the beginning of that project. 

10. August 27th: Starting from Scratch

I began the current school year in a vacant middle school art class. It was a mad scramble to get things set up. 

11. October 16th: No Return

After leaving the middle school art class, I continued to see "my" students in other classes. Somehow they were unclear on the whole they-hired-a-teacher-for-your-class bit. 

12. October 29th: Six Seven

You may have heard of this. If you don't see kiddos or teenagers regularly, you do not know my pain. It's worse than you know. Six... seven... 

13. December 3rd: A Reading Lesson

The end of the calendar year saw me back in the day-to-day subbing of it all. This day was a senior English class where they were studying a graphic novel.

Finding the Video

By now I'm sure you heard about how 60 Minutes had a story all ready to go about CECOT only to have it pulled by the new head of news because the news is no longer critical of the regime. But, of course, almost immediately the segment escaped containment. 

Have you seen it? 

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

[image or embed]

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog.xyz) December 22, 2025 at 5:28 PM

I heard it was on YouTube, but it got taken down. But someone posted it on Bluesky in five parts. The above is the first part. Click through to the post to find the rest of the thread. If you'd like to save these for yourself, you can use the Bluesky Video Downloader.

If you look through that thread, I saw a couple other ways to view it if you're so inclined (and this way doesn't work for you). 

And then PBS did a segment on Frontline: Surviving CECOT. This one should be easier to view.

While we're on the topic, some more articles about ICE and what they're doing:

• Hiding out with an immigrant family in ICE-occupied Memphis.
• ICE Says U.S. Citizen’s Birth Certificate Is Fake After Arresting Her: Attorneys
• The Horns and Whistles Work

(I finally found a whistle. They had them at Daiso. Where are they selling whistles near you?)

Before I close this out, this is my last Tuesday post for the year. How much of Project 2025 did the regime manage to accomplish this year? Someone took the time to find out. 

Gifted Beanies

As predicted, I did not finish eldest nephew's sweater in time for Christmas. The next question is: will I finish it in January? 

I do not know. I have about half of one sleeve. So, maybe? 

As luck would have it, the family made the trip out to SoCal, so I could give presents in person. I brought along the work-in-progress so eldest nephew could see how it was coming along. He was impressed. Apparently, cables are impressive. Who knew? 

(Eldest nephew was also dealing with a miserable cold. On his birthday.) 

But I had finished some things. Like, the beanie for middle nephew in "Lakers colors". 

Yeah, he was wearing a Lakers t-shirt. Because, of course. 

And the beanie for my brother: 

Then the two of them took a selfie in their beanies:

I took a pic as they took their selfie. 

So, I will be continuing the Christmas knitting after Christmas. I knew this would happen, though, so I'm not terribly upset about it. 

The irony? When I referenced what they had asked me for in July, they had forgotten. So, the twins were quite content with the purchased long-sleeved sweatshirts (with Minecraft on them), and my sister-in-law wasn't upset that I hadn't started her sweater at all.