We do most of our charitable giving every year in December – and today was “Giving Tuesday” and several of the charities we support had one-day-only matching campaigns, so we sat down this afternoon to make some donations.

It took a couple of hours, between the emails and paper mails that we’d been waiting to handle – by the time we were finished, we were achy from sitting so long! The next step is submitting eligible contributions to the IBM Matching Grants program; at least they got rid of the paper forms a few years ago!

But today wasn’t just about donations. A few days ago I bought an All-Clad skillet; it arrived on Saturday, but I didn’t get around to opening the box until this morning.

I’ve already used it twice, making Pan Seared Lingcod for lunch and Pasta with Burst Cherry Tomatoes for dinner. It cooks differently than our Anolon pan – it seemed to get hotter (the cherry tomatoes cooked in 5 minutes instead of 10, which threw off my timing for the rest of the recipe, though some of that might have to do with using a bigger burner than usual). And I’ll have to get used to heating the pan before putting the oil in it, which also will change the timings for the rest of the recipe.

So far, so good!

I was in the shower this morning when I heard loud noises coming from the bedroom. It was an Emergency Alert on my phone. I kept showering.

A few minutes later, Diane came in and told me that it was letting us know about the new Covid-19 restrictions that had gone into effect today, which is what I thought it was going to be.

And so it goes.

We tried yet another new recipe today, Quinoa With Roasted Winter Vegetables and Pesto from the Times, using up the extra pesto I’d made yesterday. It was OK but needed something else to make it complete – and I was a little hungry afterwards, so I broke out this year’s first box of Trader Joe’s Peppermint Bark. We forgot to take a photo, but here’s the one Diane took one of our very colorful lunch (Sheet-Pan Cilantro Chicken and Kale and salad) instead!