I had a whole thing I wanted to do, and now I can't remember what it is. Well, welcome to 2026, I guess. And this is a good topic for sort of New Year. I want to talk about New Year, actually, because I always feel like... Should we introduce ourselves first, just like really early, get it out of the way? I mean, we'll throw Eric off and everyone else, but sure, welcome everyone to Fade of Names. I'm Sarah McLean. I read romance novels and I write them.

And I'm Sarah McLean. I read

romance novels and I write them. And I'm Jennifer Procop, a romance reader and editor. And it's

January. And I think here's my question. And I know what your answer is going to be because

you're still a teacher. But New Year's always feels sort of like a fraud to me because it's really not. Like I appreciate that we all do New Year's

resolutions. Although I read this like really interesting thing that was like biologically, like the

winter is actually a terrible time to do resolutions because like your body like, you're animals, right?

So it's, we're designed to just like shut down to like

fatten up and like go under the covers doing a great job everyone i mean i'm good at that in

july too everyone but the um and so like really we should be making resolutions and like

you know late spring interesting and so which is an you know, late spring. Interesting. And so, which is an, you know,

whatever, you do you, everyone. But truly, like, it's that whole new and crisp in the fall thing.

Yeah. I mean, I, as listen, my entire life is a school teacher. I just feel like, what's, this is not

anything. This is just the middle of a school year. And this is like a northern hemisphere thing, I think, because although I'm sort of curious, like, I don't, I don't really know how school works anywhere else in the world. So, well, my friend Brittany, I don't know, you got, you know this, the one who did all your TikToks move to Botswana with her family. And I literally, like the other day, she talked about her daughter, Botswana to find it on the map. It is directly north of South Africa. And so it's the southern hemisphere. Correct. And she mentioned being on, like her daughter being on summer break. And I was like, Britney, it is one thing to know that you live on a different continent now. But the fact that you flat up live in a different hemisphere. Yeah, the upside down. My brain just like glitched. I was like, I was like, wait, that's fucking crazy. So like, does they have multiple months off the way we do? I don't know. I have not. I know. It's complicated. We don't know know somebody on the discord is about is already drafting

a post yeah please tell me how does school work where you live i want to know how this works how

this works yeah um we were in uh um my daughter i took my daughter to australia new zealand over

over our summer in august and it was not summer there, and all the kids were in school.

So that felt. And she kept going, why are all these kids in school?

Because it's not summer here. Yeah, right? Which is why she got the flu. So there it is.

Listen, public service announcement, if you are going to the other hemisphere, to the southern hemisphere in the months of May, June, July, August, September, get your flu shot.

Yeah.

Before you go.

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