Welcome to signups for this year’s Virtual Advent Tour. 2019 marks my fifth year as host of this annual event.

If this is your first time here at the winter holidays, welcome! As you probably know, a traditional Advent calendar is a season-marking device on which each day in December leading up to Christmas Day you open a door to unveil a hidden scene or piece of chocolate or some other delight. The Virtual Advent Tour is a bloggers’ take on that. In our version, each morning I’ll point you to a post at someone’s blog in which they share something about their holiday season.

Would you be willing to share a winter holiday post one or two days next month? You’d know the date(s) ahead of time (and can request a specific one if you’d like), your post can be as simple or as complex and in whatever format suits you, and there’s no need to tell me what you’re going to write about in advance. Folks have shared favorite holiday music, charities, recipes, religious calendar dates, literature, local events, memories, and traditions both old and new, to name some of the topics from years past.

If it sounds fun and you’d like to participate, please leave me a comment on this post telling me what date(s) you’d like. I’ll update this post as people claim days.

Oh, and a couple final housekeeping notes:

1. While both the tradition of the Advent calendar and the timing skew Christian, the tour is inclusive and open to anyone who celebrates December holidays of any sort — from Hanukkah to Kwanzaa, from Festivus to Solstice, and from Christmas to a new-to-me holiday I’m excited to hear about — and wants to share them with us. We love reading about all kinds of holiday celebrations and the traditions you’ve developed around them!
2. I have links to the 2019 Virtual Advent Tour badges in 400px and 200px that you’re welcome to download and use on your blog. If you want another size, let me know.
3. I’m trying to keep things simple this year. I tend to write my posts shortly after midnight my time (Eastern U.S.) and will schedule them to go live at 6 a.m. It would be awesome if your post were live when I’m writing because then I can give a little preview and link directly to it. However, if it’s not, I will assume you’ll get it live at some point, and will just embed a song and will link to your blog’s homepage.
4. As a participant, you may find you’ll get more responses to your post if you allow open comments (comments that don’t require someone to sign in to Google or Disqus, for instance) on your blog for that day. Obviously that choice is entirely up to you, but I have noticed that trend in past years.
5. If you use social media, I’ve used the hashtag #VirtualAdventTour on Twitter without complication for the past couple years.

Thanks in advance for making this one of my fun December traditions!

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This week’s cold snap brought an unusual turn of events:

The gingko trees, which seem to shed their foliage all at once in a single exhausted sigh, dropped their leaves, still somewhat green, rather than their usual late autumnal gold.

The maples, however?

Still going strong.

Rudi comes home from Salt Lake, where he’s been visiting his mom, tomorrow night. I’m really looking forward to seeing him. Besides his return, here’s what I’m thinking this weekend should hold:

• Cook the quince that I promised Rudi would not still be hanging around when he returned home. If they’re on the stove when he gets back, that counts, right?
• Do laundry, since I did none while he was away and I’ll be traveling for work most of this coming week.
• Hang up the fairy lights around the living room, because we didn’t do that before Rudi left and it’s definitely easier with two people because of the way the furniture is arranged.
• Go to the library, where some new holds have come in.
• Ride bikes. Maybe separately. Maybe together. Mine will involve riding to hot beverages. Rudi’s may involve hills.
• Finish those last rows on my shawl so I can consider blocking it while I’m at my folks’ place for Thanksgiving.
• Put away ten things. Because my living room looks like it’s been a homeless encampment for the past year, and even my dead grandmother could put away a mere ten items.
• Find a pair of jeans. Yes, I should have just ordered some online so I’d have a decent pair to travel with. But I didn’t.
• Pull together my Virtual Advent Tour announcement.
• Soak up some sunshine on Saturday, because Sunday’s forecast looks overcast.

Man, my weekend looks like I’m going to be way more productive than my life suggests I’ve been otherwise lately. Fingers crossed that I get through at least half of this list…

What are you looking forward to this weekend?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The heat is running when I sit down on the bus.

2. I meet a friend for drinks after work to keep from being lonely while Rudi is away.

3. The weather has been chilly, which is appropriate for November.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

I turned on ABC when I got home tonight in anticipation of decompressing to an episode of Stumptown. Unfortunately, it wasn’t on. However, the Country Music Awards were. I’m not a huge fan of awards show, but this had both a number of collaborations where I recognized at least the name of one of the artists and more singing than talking, so I dozed through the second two thirds of the show.

Here are a couple performances from it:

Here, I knew the song and Sheryl Crow. I’ve heard the name Dierks Bentley, but honestly I couldn’t have told you if it was a person or a group before tonight. (In case you were also wondering, he’s a guy and “Dierks” is his middle name.) Also performing are Chris Janson, Joe Walsh (he’s from The Eagles) and John Osborne.

This is a mashup of Lady Antebellum’s “What If I Never Get Over You?” and Halsey’s “Graveyard” and includes some amazing harmonies.

There was also a nice performance by Thomas Rhett of “Remember You Young,” but I can’t find a video of that anywhere for you. I’d never heard of him before, but it was a very pretty song.

Ride #6: Sunday, Nov. 10, evening
Pluma (391 Morse St., N.E.)

I sort of procrastinated in figuring out where my next Coffeeneuring ride was until choices started dropping off my list due to it being Sunday and later in the afternoon.

After ruling out a different NoMa business after I arrived because I wasn’t feeling their menu that particular day, I pulled out my phone to see if I could track down an alternative.

Enter Pluma.

Pluma is the storefront for Bluebird Bakery and is located on a side street near Union Market. Their signage is minimal, and despite the fact that I’ve been over there a bunch of times (including the day before), I’d never noticed they were there.

This was a delicious oversight.

I opted for hot cider and a pear-ginger-hazelnut muffin. The muffin may look all healthy and bran-like there in its beigeness, but it is just trying to fool you. This is one of the best muffins I have ever had. The combination of flavors was mind-blowing. And the apple cider made the perfect crisply sweet counterbalance.

You’d better believe I’ll be back.

In terms of bikability, there are racks across the street next to Blue Bottle Coffee. And the nearest Bikeshare dock is on the other side of Union Market two blocks away.

It got dark (and a little chilly) while I was sitting inside. Because I was wearing dark clothes and my helmet’s light has gone out, I decided to take Metro home instead of biking back.

Total mileage: 3.85 miles