shannon_a

The rest of our plane ride to the Bay Area was uneventful after I convinced Hover Man (who hovered in the aisle to be near his wife for about 45 minutes before I got irate) to sit down. Curiously, Hover Man was very friendly to Kimberly when he later saw her in the airplane ("Oh, so good to see you again.") Weird.

Well, the flight was uneventful other than lots of turbulence which maybe would have caused airline staff to force Hover Man to sit down anyway.

I almost finished up my Designers & Dragons history for the month (Thursday Knight Games) while on the plane, but nowadays I always find the mere 4-5 hour flight to and from Hawaii not long enough, so I still have a bit of rearrangement and editing and clearing out of notes (to make sure I didn't miss anything).

--

We've had two nice days in San Martin. Yesterday was of course Thanksgiving and the fam was here: both my brothers and of course Jason's family. There was good food, good talk, and a good game of Calico. There were just the one niece and nephew present but it felt like at least half-a-dozen. But we played a quiet little game of Candyland too.

Today my mom showed me a bit of how to play a Uke in the morning. I was able to slowly piece together "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands", as it just has two chords, C and G7. My mom said I picked it up very quickly, but I have played piano and (more briefly) guitar in the past. Might there be more uke playing in the future? Maybe.

Then we went out to played pickle ball. I played maybe four games and felt pretty good. I think my partner and I won 3 out of the 4, but we played inside this time, and they had (or at least we played with) more beginning players. My mom, again offering the compliments, said I'd improved notably since last year, which if true would be impressive as I haven't played since then. (I got pickle ball paddles for home after our play here last year, but I'd been hoping to play with Kimberly rather than dive in on my own, but that just hasn't been possible with her knee and leg problems. So we'll see, maybe I will dive in this coming year.)

And to conclude the busy day, my brothers came back (sans fam) and we played board games and ping pong. The games I ended up in were Carcassone and Cascadia.

(How weird is it that of the four games I played over the last two days, every one started with the letters "Ca", though granted, we brought two of those ourselves.)

Anyway, good time. Good hanging out with family.

And lots of good food. Thanksgiving fixings, of course. Eggs (from my mom's hens). Bacon. Pancakes. Homemade sourdough bread. Pulled pork sandwiches. Shrimp and crab cakes. Mmmm.

It's cold though.

_Three more days at the Wiedlin house (Christmas Eve through Boxing Day), celebrating the holidays._

THE FITBIT CONUNDRUM. While we were packing I told K. not to pack her Fitbit charger. We both have Charge 6s now and I'd already packed the USB cord that recharges mine, so no problem. And then on our first day in San Martin I tried to charge my Charge 6 and I flipped it over and over in the little clip that's supposed to attach it to its charging connectors. No dice. No charge. At which point I realized I'd brought my old charger for my (likely) dead Versa 2. Whoops.

Fortunately, the local Best Buy in Gilroy claimed they had one Charge 6 charger. I never trust the old "we have one" claim, as that's usually an inventory/lossage error. But I ordered one online for Curbside pickup and voila, on Christmas Eve morning they told me it was ready. So down to Gilroy we went. I'd never used curbside pickup before, but there was no way I was walking into a Best Buy on Christmas Eve. It was delivered right to our car window, quickly and efficiently. So now we're not going "waste" steps on this trip.

SOUTH TO NORTH. Later on Christmas Eve my mom and I biked up to Morgan Hill, which is the opposite direction from Gilroy. On the ebikes, of course. Fun ride. We did about 16 miles. (I used pedal assist level 1 most of the trip, and pulled it up to level 2 for the final bit back home.) My mom showed my around Morgan Hill a little, then we rode a trail I didn't know existed along Llagas Creek, and even explored a new spur that went in this year and my mom had never ridden before. Fun to see my mom loves exploring new bike trails, just like I did in my 20 years of active biking in the Bay Area, and also fun to see there's at least one more trail down there than the Coyote Creek Trail I already knew about. (This one is south of the Coyote Creek Trail and a pretty small thing, relatively.)

THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR. Yesterday was Christmas. My brother R. had joined us for Christmas Eve, and we all had Christmas morning together, then we went over to my brother J. & s-i-l L.'s house for Christmas afternoon. We had more Christmas there. My niece & nephew got TONS of presents (including from us, of course). I also got to spend some time with them, and they were quite sweet (and less wild than last year). My niece L. kept bringing me presents to read the tags of, and whenever I told her one was hers, she'd ask, "Can I open it? Can I open it?" My nephew J. asked me to play Lego with him and later play in the backyard with him.

I'd known that modern Lego sets had instructions for how to put them together and special pieces to make that possible, but I hadn't realized that they were all these teeny extremely thin pieces that you built up millimeter by millimeter. Wow. So J. had a Donkey Kong set and we got most of Donkey Kong's legs and body together over the course of something less than an hour. J. was pretty good with it, but I'd sometimes correct him, and when we'd look more carefully I'd be right about 50% of the time and he'd be right about 50% of the time. Heh. It really looks like these Lego sets are training kids for a future of Ikea furniture building.

Anyway, a nice Christmas day all around.

HIKING. We missed any notable exercise on Christmas Day, but the day after (today), my mom and I hiked a bit in the hills right behind their house. We just did a mile up into the hills and a mile back, but we got some good ascent and got high enough to look over the valley. We also dodged quite a few cows, and poor Zeke puppy, who was of course hiking with us, was terrified of them. When one of them was positioned in the middle of the trail, lowing away, Zeke practically climbed the hillside to get around it.

GAMES, GAMES, GAMES. We played lots of Games while at Casa Wiedlin. I'm think we played Cascadia three times. I remember K. won our first game, R. kicked butt at a game on Christmas Eve even though it was his first game, and I finally racked up a win today after that game on Christmas Eve where I'd thought I was a winner before I saw R's score. We always played a game of Nidavellir, which I've wanted a copy of since I played it online early in the pandemic, and finally got one for Christmas. I think my mom won that one.

TO BERKELEY. Today was the great transition from San Martin to Berkeley, marking the mid point of our holiday. We are staying at suite in a hotel in Berkeley. Our first reaction when we got into our room was that it was COLD. But the heater was off. We turned it on, and four hours later the room has never really gotten better than slightly chilly. Part of the problem seems to be that the second heater in the bedroom generates no heat. So we've cranked the living room heater up and up over the course of the evening, and pulled shut all the drapes, and hope that eventually the whole suite warms up, because that was one of our goals in staying in a hotel, as in some recent years we've had AirBnBs in Berkeley and Oakland that had rooms that were ice cold (mostly the bathrooms!). Of course, the other reason for the hotel stay was accessibility for K. because of her messed up knee.

K. has already started seeing folks here in Berkeley, as she went out to dinner with a few tonight (while I just picked up a chicken cheese steak, something not available on island as far as I know). But I'll start seeing people tomorrow. Walking and chatting tomorrow; gaming on Thursday, more gaming on Saturday, and a blesséd free day on Friday. Before we go home on New Year's Eve.

_Yesterday, we set off for the Bay Area for the holidays._

SNEAKER ALERT! At Lihue Airport yesterday, the TSA seemed to be giving extra attention to footware. I get randomly selected for a footware check, which involves me stepping to the side and them wiping down my sneakers and then putting the wiper into a bomb detector. No problem, since I have TSA-Pre. My shoes were on my feet, and I was not required to remove them. The guy two behind me got flagged too, and since he didn't have TSA-Pre, he had to wait for his shoes before he can bring them back to the TSA agent. I've never before seen checks specifically on shoes, not even in Mad Shoe Bomber days. Was there a shoe threat reported yesterday morning? And why were extra checks required on shoes that had just gone through the x-ray machine?

CLOWN CARS. The planes were _crowded_ yesterday. Yeah, I'm sure that's true all over the country, but flying out of Hawaii just before the holidays and back just after, we're often avoiding the biggest crowds by running contraflow. Not yesterday. As our plane arrived and we watch it deplane there were huge numbers of people getting off. Then there was a big gap and I thought they must be done, then at least as many people get off again. I thought of clown cars at the circus.

We got to watch this phenomenon again and again over the course of the day as we were constantly first-on/last-off due to Kimberly's ailing knee.

ALMOST, BUT NO CIGAR. I long for the old Hawaiian airplanes that were laid out with their seats 2-3-2, meaning that you had two seats near the bulkheads, then aisles, then three in the middle. Unfortunately, they stopped being used right around COVID, replaced with smaller 3-3 planes. That means that you can no longer fly off the islands and have two seats to yourselves unless you fly first class (and there were no first class seats available for the trip out). Which is a bummer in this age of COVID, especially when disease is rising during the holidays.

Nonetheless, I always do my best to game my seats. So I'll always choose two seats in a row where the third seat isn't taken yet, and I'll even switch seats at the last minute if that third seat has been taken and there's another row where it hasn't. Heading into this flight, the third seat in our row was empty, and it being an "extra comfort" seat, I had some hope it wouldn't be filled at the last minute. Well, all the early group numbers boarded, and that usually would have included the extra-comfort seats, and no one filled or seat. Then another 10 or 15 minutes went by as more people slowly entered the clown car, and the seat stayed empty. Would we be lucky despite the extremely full flights?

I could see the very, very last person on the plane queueing up down the aisle, with the bulkhead doors closed behind her. And ... she dropped her backpack in that third seat next to us before heading rearward to try and find someplace for her carry on.

Alas!

MASK ALERT. Hawaiian Airlines has pre-recorded their emergency instructions for many years. The ones that you get at the start of a trip. I noticed when we flew yesterday that after the prerecorded message, they then had a spiel that they did live about how if the oxygen masks drop and you're wearing a face covering you should take that off before putting putting on your oxygen mask. And I thought: they haven't updated their prerecorded emergency info since the pandemic.

INTERESTING TIMES. Our seatmate seemed perfectly nice, meaning she didn't try to talk to us, but also pretty weird. I think she just gave no f***s.

But she had earphones in most of the flight and was frequently shaking her head and moving her lips along to the song.

She puts on about seven layers of clothes after boarding the plane, most notably standing in the aisle to pull on a pair of pants.

When she ate her meal, a gentrified hot pocket, she ripped off all the outer bread and just ate the inner bits. Apparently the more cooked bread wasn't as good.

At one point she caused me and Kimberly great concern when she seems to fall asleep with her elbow on her tray table and a cup of coffee lifted up in the air.

We exchanged a few pleasantries when we were landing. She took a bazillion pictures of San Jose's lights as we landed, and seemed pretty entranced by them, so hopefully a great time in the city.

AIRPORT RACE. Landing at San Jose, Kimberly had another wheelchair, which took her to our luggage pickup. The lady wheeling her RACED. I had to hustle to keep up! (Good exercise after five or six hours on a plane.)

FIRST & LAST. We had a weird first and last day. We were literally the first people on the plane to San Jose because Kimberly was in a wheel chair. Then our seatmate was literally the last person on the plane. Then, picking up our luggage, we were literally the last people out of the Luggage Chamber. Ah well, our plane arrived about 30 minutes early. And there was the mad airport rush.

_Today was our first day of holiday, and we made the most of it, not only with lots of great eating, but lots of stuff too._

PICKLEBALL. My mom and Bob have been playing pickleball for six months or so (and were both variously injured from it when I was out in September). So we went out to play pickleball today, along with my brother J. First time pickleballer here, lots of fun. It felt a lot like Ping Pong to me, but obviously more athletic. More Ping Pong than Tennis, though I don't think I've played Tennis since High School. I mostly figured out the serving and got into the play. Not particularly good, but competent. I played two games alongside Bob, two alongside my mom, and one with another player at the court. (The community there seemed great). All around, a good time. After five games, I decided I should stop because my ankle I hurt in September was twinging and that hamstring had also gotten really tight.

But I'm thinking about picking up a pickleball paddle for Christmas, as it looks like they play at the tennis courts about a mile from us, on the mauka side of Kalaheo. Both the exercise and the community would be very welcome, and those courts are really close.

ADAM. After we got home, we watch _The Adam Project_ on Netflix. I love a good time travel movie, and this was a good time travel movie. It wasn't that it had clever timey wimey paradoxes (which I love). Oh, there was some attention to how paradoxes worked. But the movie was great because it visited some of the same people from different time periods, and it was super charming in doing so.

CASCADIA. We closed out the day with some Cascadia. Always fun, though I crashed & burned for my second game in a row. Oddly that's the two games we've played since we pulled in the tiles from the Landmarks supplement. Huh.

_So a first full day of vacation ends, and I feel somewhat lighter. Obviously, K. is still having serious problems with her knee, and is in mucho pain, but just relaxing with family who are taking care of us is great after a hard, hard year._

We flew back to the Bay Area on Friday to celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends. The first few days we spent in San Martin.

It was a great family stay with my mom and Bob. Rob flew in the same night as we did from a work trip to Oregon, so we saw him that night, then Jason stopped by on Saturday, then the whole family was there on Sunday, so we got to see everyone.

There was much gaming. I brought _Railroad Ink Challenge_, _Boomerang: Australia_, and _Between Two Cities_ and we played all of them. _Boomerang_ was the biggest hit, with both Jason and Bob picking up wins at various times. _Railroad Ink Challenge_ was a flop, in part because Bob's drawing was so bad that it was indecipherable at the end. (It's also a more thoughtful and strategic game that takes more learning.) _Between Two Cities_ went well as always, and it's really a delightfully social game, with you always talking to your two partners, so I thought it was great for family play.

There was much eating. Sunday was a typical Thanksgiving dinner, held early because Jason, Lisa, and their family will be elsewhere on Thanksgiving proper. So, tasty turkey, mashed potato, gravy, cranberry, and crescent rolls (which I all love), plus stuffing and yams (which I didn't bother with because I'm not a fan of either, but that's one of the nice elements of a big family dinner). There was also a tasty shrimp dinner the night before Thanksgiving and a great pizza dinner the night before that and chicken sausages every morning, plus pancakes, bacon, bagels, and donuts on various mornings. So, much good eating.

There was much walking. Saturday my mom took me out on a great hike in the Coyote Lake Harvey Bear Ranch County Park (pick a name; our country is at war). We walked the Mummy Trail which was a nice ridgeline trail that gave us views of Coyote Lake to one side and San Martin and Gilroy to the other. Then today we walked The Loop, which is a paved path in a much nearer part of Harvey Bear. We of course took the dogs both times, and I got to walk Joy, who's really become a sweetie (other than what Rob calls the sonic-boom bark [or something like that]).

We also visited with goats, watched a few TV shows (the first episode of "Cabinet of Curiosities", which got a thumbs down, which is a pity because everyone on FB seemed to be loving it, and then "Bo: Burnham: Inside", which was an interesting comedy-special look at life during the pandemic).

Finally, I got to meet my nephew and other niece more than I ever had before. Julian is very smart and somewhat wild. Lucy is super sweet, and at one point insisted on getting in my lap so she could play with the animal pieces of the game Julian and I had tried to play (an animal stacking game) before he started playing with them in other ways. (Or at least those were my impressions from a bit of one-on-one interaction.)

Overall, a great couple of days. I was thrilled to get to spend time in San Martin twice in just a few months.

THE HAGUE, DAY -1

This was my day to hang out with my mom and Bob on my trip through San Jose. I pretty much needed to stop somewhere to avoid sleeping two nights on planes (or rather failing to do so), and San Jose seemed like the prime choice because I could spend an extra day here seeing the folks. (It was too brief, I would have liked to stay a day or two more, but this trip is already longer than I like at 12 days.)

I woke up to a nice breakfast of scrambled eggs and biscuit. Since I never eat breakfast, that was a really nice treat.

Then I met the new goats. Three of them. Very cute, but also pretty skittish around other people (e.g., me).

Then the main event of the day was a bike ride. My mom and Bob have recently gotten e-bikes, so we took those up the Coyote Creek Trail that runs from San Martin to San Jose. When I lived in the East Bay, I'd dreamed of biking down from BART to San Martin, but it depended on BART getting to Berryessa, and that was delayed by more than a year, until after our move, so it never happened. Which made this a nice treat (though I'd ridden a little of the trail with Bob some years previous).

Anyway, we biked 10 miles up the Creek, turned around, and went back. That's about two-thirds of the full trail. I was shocked to learn that we'd actually been up in San Jose when we turned around, so I guess I kinda succeeded at the goal of biking from San Jose to San Martin.

The ride was beautiful. The type of scenario that I fondly remember from California. Brown hills, babbling creeks, green trees, scrub, suburbs. It was also just a bit chill the whole time. I told my mom it was the coolest bike ride I'd likely had in 2.5 years (though I took my bike up to Koke'e once, up to 3500 feet, so maybe not, but I remember that being a pretty hot ride, though much of that was heavy exertion on the rocky, hilly paths).

I rode one of the ebikes. It was pretty terrific. A really smooth ride. I rode it without petal assist out to San Jose, and then I put it on the lowest really operable level of petal assist ("2" out of 5) for the ride back. The petal assist was a notable help, especially on hills. I would have loved something like that when I biked the hills above Berkeley, which was always about as much as I could do. But the ebikes are just really taking off now (not years ago).

Afterward we had some Mexican dinner at a restaurant (in the outside area of course), which was a nice tostada salad for me (and without the green peppers and melted cheese that they tend to put on in Hawaii), and then we played a game of Azul, which I brought mainly because I had plenty of space in my suitcase. (There were also some smaller games that we didn't play, but no worries, I was happy to have some variety.) My mom won that!

We finished off the day watching the last half of the first episode of Lost in Space, which I liked much more than I expected because of its scientific foundation, its likable characters, and the character revelations of the last few minutes. Hoping to watch more back in Kauai once we finish our current shows (The Sandman and Doctor Who).

Altogether, a very nice day. I'm glad I thought to pause for a full day here.

Tomorrow: a very long plane ride.

I'm away from home for 12 days for my trip to RWOT11 in The Hague.

Funny story. I seriously had to question whether I had 12 pairs of good socks any more. I just wear socks so infrequently in Hawaii. (Spoiler: I did.)

Why am I starting my journaling with Day -2? Because it's hard traveling from Hawaii to Europe because you're going against the sun almost halfway around the world (and definitely 12 time zones this time of year). There was absolutely no way to arrange an itinerary that didn't involve two redeyes, and that would have totally trashed my sleep schedule right before our workshop. So, instead, I'm flying to San Jose, spending two nights at my mom and Bob's place in San Martin, and then continuing on to The Hague via San Francisco.

(Hawaiian has said they're getting some bigger jets that will allow direct flights to Europe, so hopefully that'll be easier in a few years' time, though I'm concerned those big jets may also make problems with the existing overtourism of the islands worse. And having an excuse to stop in San Martin is nice.)

Unfortunately the direct flight from Kauai to San Jose (which is on Alaskan) flies really late during daylight saving's time, and I didn't want to not get in until 9 or 10pm today. So instead I got an early flight out of Lihue on Hawaiian with a changeover in Maui.

I've been concerned that these flights from Hawaii to the mainland were my biggest chance to get COVID before the workshop, which would be a terrible, terrible waste, even though all my flights are refundable. But, my fingers are crossed because things have looked good.

My hop from Lihue to Maui was my only fully coach seat, and so when I checked in I looked at the seats and found there was actually a window seat that had an adjacent middle seat. I swapped over to that window from what I'd previously scheduled and 'lo and behold when I got into that seat today, I had an empty seat next to me.

At the Maui airport I stopped in a small open courtyard to eat the other half of the Subway sandwich that I acquired in Lihue on Monday night. Part of the avoid-getting-COVID-on-16-hours-of-plane-flight plan involved not eating on the planes on the way out to San Jose. So, the stop in Maui was nice, because it gave me the opportunity.

It was the second or third time I've been through Kahului (OGG). As with Oahu, the airport has interisland gates (where you don't have to ag-check anything) and other gates (where you do). My memory last time was that the interisland area was quiet and the mainland/international area was crazy, but either my memory was wrong or it was the opposite this time. (But my other memory is from flying in to Kauai via Maui, so that would have been later in the day.)

Anyway, today's second flight. Terrific seat. It was in the pseudo-bulkhead row because first class, but Hawaiian has redone that pseudo-bulkhead so that its angled, giving more leg room at the bottom, and so you now get the space under the seats, past the bulkhead, for your stuff. BONUS! Other than width, this seat is better than the First Class seats just in front of me because there's SOOOO much room.

Also, as a bonus, and even more important, the people sitting next to me hwore their masks the whole time, except when eating and drinking. Yay!

(On the downside, in First Class, just on the other side of the bulkhead, was a young woman who just wouldn't shut up. She maintained a monologue with her seatmate for the first two hours of the flight. It's wasn't quite crying-baby bad, nor yes-I-think-it's-OK-to-blast-my-music-on-an-airplane bad, but she really liked to talk.)

I had heavily prepared my computer for the trip with lots of stuff to do and the time just flew by (other than increasing aches and pains over time). I read through the two comics I'd saved from my August Hoopla, updated a poster for RWOT, did some research for the Traveller book, and did some proofing on a creative project for Chris, and poof! The trip was over. So much more I want to do.

Bob picked me up, and then we picked up Popeye's and all spent a bit of time together in the evening.

(But tomorrow is my main day to hang out with mom and Bob, before I continue on to SFO, and from there Schiphol in the Netherlands.)

So the main event yesterday was visiting with family. Jason, Lisa, Julian, Lucy, Rick, and Tracy.

We got together for lunch and had a terrific time talking (and noshing). There was a constant flow of adults about the table as various people ran off to the beach at various times to keep the kids happy. I couldn't really keep track of who was around at any moment (though maybe that was in part the one Mai Tai), but I was happy to talk with anyone there, as they're all terrific people.

Afterward, Jason and the gramps were going over to the lagoon so that Julian could swim. He's apparently very fond of everywhere that he gets to swim. But I had no swim suit. (It was at the apartment just a few blocks away, but it would have taken time to go there and back; I guess I should have worn the tourist uniform of constant-swimsuit while on Oahu.)

But, Lisa wanted to get a new phone cover because hers had broken, so I went trekking out with her instead. Which was terrific. Not only did I get exercise, and to offer my limited knowledge of Waikiki to find her a phone case store, but we also had a good time chatting, probably more one-on-one time than I've ever had with my SiL.

While we were nearing our final phone accessory store (after striking out at the Apple store), Lisa received a frantic call from Jason that the kids were getting tired and ready for naps, but we still had time to find her her phone case and hike back to meet them at the car.

And then the whirlwind meeting with family was done!

I was thrilled to see everyone. Well worth the trip to Oahu.

The previous night while on the zoom with my RPG friends, one of them expressed confusion that I'd fly to Oahu to see people. He likened it to someone flying from the East Coast to Arizona while I lived in California, and me flying out to see them.

I think you have to live on one of the neighbor islands to understand how casual it is to fly over to Oahu. Oh, it's $100 or a bit more round trip. But it's a short little jump, and you don't have to get to the airport that early on the neighbor-island side. I could really have flown over Sunday morning and back Sunday evening if I wanted. And we have done that before.

But I'm happier spending a few nights. Which is more expensive. But gives us a bit of urban time away from home. (Or in this case, gave *me* that.)

I didn't do much else yesterday. I was pretty zonked out after an afternoon of socializing and a few miles more walking.

(In fact, I was surprised to find my feet blistering after two days of walking. I was surprised because it wasn't unusual amount of walking. 6-10 miles or something each day. But the difference was that I'm not walking great lengths on PAVEMENT any more when I'm not on Oahu. If I do 6 or 10 miles, it's on dirt mostly. So I think the feet aren't up to the city walking I used to do any more, alas. In any case, after I got the blisters, I mostly wore my new slippas that I'm still breaking in, and they didn't hurt my blisters at all, though I'm still wearing one bandaid with them, for the aforementioned breaking in.)

As night approached, I got up the gumption to go out walking again and picked up some dim sum near Ala Moana which I brought home for dinner (and for breakfast today). Dim sum has definitely become an Oahu treat.

This morning I went for one last walk along the water front. I love the Waikiki waterfront, even if it's a bit crowded.

Then it was back to pack up the AirBnB and check out.

I was planning to do one more walk, out to Ala Moana Park, but I realized I had the time of the flight wrong in my head, and was thinking about arrival instead of departure, so I hopped on a bus instead. (Total transport costs this trip: $6. If you ignore the plane, of course. But Uber back and forth to the airport can be almost the cost of a plane ticket if they're doing gouge-pricing. So, bus is a lot cheaper!)

I discovered a bit of a disaster on the bus back to the airport: I'd left the shopping bag of BTS "merch" that Kimberly and I carefully picked out (via video) back at the AirBnB. I _almost_ hopped off the bus, which likely would have resulted in me missing my flight, but thinking it through I realized there was no way I was getting back into that hotel suite, because it was past check-out time and it was an independently owned apartment, so no way as the hotel letting me in. But, I contacted the host immediately, and even though they're some big corporate thing, by evening they'd located the bag and say they'll be sending it over tomorrow via USPS. Hopefully all there and arrives in one piece, but I'm feeling much better about it now, fingers crossed.

Honolulu airport was a MESS. I've been seeing it get worse and worse since our first trip a few months into the pandemic. Probably mostly normal now, which is not functioning great. There were such lines for TSA, that they almost backed over the end of the Pre-TSA line. And of course you often have to walk miles at Honolulu Airport. But I eventually got to my gate and tried to sit as far as possibly from all the people eating under the "No eating or drinking in holding area" signs.

I had a better boarding number this time because I checked-in within a minute or two of being able too. But somehow every overhead bin was full by the time I got onboard. I set down next to a polite couple who looked like they were wearing their masks properly, and it was a fine flight, even if I had to rest my feet on my backpack in the squashed seats.

It was very sad Kimberly couldn't make it to Oahu. As a result I had a big suite that I barely used. I think in the "bonus" half of the suite (as the suite was basically two hotel rooms put together), with the living room and kitchen, I only made use of the dining table, one plate, the microwave, and the ice maker and water in the fridge door. Which was still worthwhile. But there was a whole living room that I barely touched.

Ah well, next time.

Happy to be home, though that of course means I'm back to all the things that need to be done, including two days of Blockchain Commons work starting tomorrow (and finishing up my tax packet and getting some tax forms sent off and ...)

I had to pack so many socks. So many socks. A pair for every day of the week. Eight pairs! That's like a month's worth of socks in Hawaii, and I wear socks a lot compared to the average resident, because I don't like to walk in wet grass in my slippas.

Jackets. So many jackets too. My rain coat (which is usually in Julie, mainly used up at Kokee). A light jacket for hiking (which hasn't been worn in two years). A heavy pullover (definitely not worn in two years). My flannel shirt (which I actually wore in the last few cool, wet days in Hawaii, mainly because I was reminded of its existence by our upcoming trip to the Bay Area).

At the airport yesterday I was hauling our suitcase and a box packed with Christmas presents (and a few of my shirts for padding).

At agriculture inspection they asked, "What's in the box", which they pretty much never do, but I later decided was maybe because cardboard boxes were a common method for trying to smuggle fruits and vegetables out of Hawaii.

(I never understood why there's agriculture inspection leaving Hawaii, not entering, because it seems like we'd be worried more about getting pests into our protected ecosystem.)

"Presents," I said.

Then when we were standing in line, the Alaskan Airlines people were super helpful. A guy ran up, grabbed my box and tossed it up by the counter while we got our bag tags (box blocks?) and waited to go up to the counter.

I don't understand why, but they scanned all of our tags that we'd just printed out and checked our IDs, which seemed weird because we were already checked in. Probably new security theatre from TSA.

Then, after we were checked in, the Alaskan Airline staffer ran over, grabbed our suitcase and box and carried them to the bag drop-off.

Wow. Make mine Alaskan.

We boarded the plane first, as usual, because of Kimberly's bad foot, and while I was fighting to get her scooter's handlebars down a limping old man scuttled past us.

He was grumbling about the masks, saying "They cause more problems than they know."

He'd clearly been doing his "research". By which I mean he was an ignorant idiot.

Of course, he sat in First Class.

Not unhappy he was so far away. Because he sounded like someone stupid enough to be unvaccinated.

Rather to my shock, at takeoff time we were told we weren't leaving because ten passengers hadn't made it through security yet.

I always though locking-the-doors-ten-minutes-prior-to-takeoff meant locking-the-door-ten-minutes-prior-to-takeoff, and I mean c'mon, Lihue is *not* a hard airport to get through. We took 15-20 minutes today, even with dropping off our luggage, and our TSA-pre only saved from stripping down and then getting dressed because there was no TSA line when we got there. So if they were late today, they were really not trying.

But, the airline waited, and a family of 10 eventually straggled in, and we were off maybe 15 minutes late.

No biggie, and I'd say they're going to say "Make Mine Alaskan", but they actually had the exact air of privilege that I expected when they sauntered in and started making disgruntled noises about the lack of space for their carry-ons.

Thankfully we were seated at least half a dozen rows from the obligatory screeching child, required on any flight of 4 hours or more.

I was a bit distressed that they're no longer checking temperatures at the airport.

The guy behind us was snuffling like his nose was jammed with mucus.

The girl who sat in our row (No more airplanes to Hawaii laid out with just two seats to the sides!), kept popping her gum that she chewed obsessively and had troubles keeping her mask over her nose.

Yeah, flying is a bit stressful now. That was certainly one of my stressors heading out, because I don't want to get trapped in the Bay Area with COVID, especially not with a likely needy cat at home.

But, I was double masked, Kimberly was double masked, and everyone else was masked even if old first-class Trumpist has delusions about what we don't know about masks and even if nose covering is apparently optional from time to time.

(Thinking about splashing out for First Class on the way home so that we *can* have two seats without anyone else with us.)

Face recognition software doesn't work very well when you're wearing a mask.

(I kept having to open my Galaxy pad by hand on the plane.)

Almost no one leaned their seat back the whole flight.

Are Alaskans more polite than Hawaiians (and Europeans, given the miserable tightness of so many flights to the continent)?

We landed, we met Bob, we got back to San Martin. we had a tasty casserole.

The house is a little chilly, but our house in Hawaii has been chilly for a few weeks, with gray weather and lots of rain. So, not so different, other than the looming cold I can feel just outside the windows.

My dad sent us a picture of Lucy eating around 6.30pm yesterday.

She looked at the camera with a betrayed looked on her face.

(Meanwhile, today, she was accepting chin rubs and looking contented, her normal people forgotten.)

Today was a full day.

We breakfasted. We watched a documentary on Sparks. We lunched. I helped my mom figure out why she was seeing her mail have someone else's name on it. (It was a bad Contacts entry, definitely not my first or second guess.) We walked Zeke and Joy out at the loop. (I ended up wearing the light jacket and the heavy pullover. It's cold outside!) We played Boomerang Australia. (I won 130-129-128-120, but I was the only one to have played it before.) Shrimp dinner is coming up.

Good to have some quiet time away (mostly) from problems of pandemic and away from the stresses that we'd had at home in recent months. And good to see family that we unexpectedly hadn't seen in 2 years(!).

The Christmas holiday started off challenging.

I'd set out all our garbage on Monday night, including three bags of extra junk in extra-special Berkeley bags, because our pickup is Tuesday morning.

Well, Tuesday morning I looked out the window around 9am and saw that all of our garbage bags had been shredded and the contents strewn across our lawn; a homeless looking guy was sauntering off toward People's Park.

While I was getting ready to go out there and deal with the disaster, I saw that said homeless guy was back on our lawn, crouched over with his pants down and peeing. I later learned that he'd pooped all over too.

And that's about when our landscaper showed up, to start work on making our house look better.

And about when I started work making our house look better by cleaning up all the trash. I had to use two more of our precious Berkeley-approved (and ~$6 bags) to replace the two of the ones destroyed by our insane vagrant, and then managed to tape up a third, since I was out of extra bags.

Fortunately, the landscaper had a shovel and bags for the poop.

Yes, it was absolutely disgusting, and absolutely why it's a problem to have homeless people illegally camped all over Berkeley. Because our out-of-touch, blind city council is actively inviting large numbers of them to the city by not enforcing any quality-of-life laws, and unfortunately a notable percentage of the homeless are mentally ill, addicted, or both. And so they tear up peoples' garbage, spread it all, and then poop and pee like it's going out of style. (Or knife each other or sexually assault girls or even occasionally murder someone; the UC police are out at Peoples' Park multiple times every single day.)

I've said before that yes we should help people at a rate that our city can sustain and a little bit more. But this was really the last straw. I'm tired of it. We can't live like this and call it civilization. But we're leaving, so Berkeley can weep what it sows. And I think they're going to be doing that for a long time.

About three hours later, Bob showed up to pick us up. We've gotten rides all the way from Berkeley to San Martin (and back) the last few years, through Kimberly's foot and now stomach problems, and it's been very kind of everyone: Bob, Rob, and Jason at various times. And of course that gave us extra time to talk as well, which we did both there (and later) back.

The holiday was largely like others we've had down there: a shrimp dinner on Christmas Eve, a nice breakfast on Christmas Day, an excess of presents, a traditional ham dinner for Christmas (with traditional tamales from Lisa), and board games throughout (this time Dragon Castle and Sheriff of Nottingham, both games gifted last year, both courtesy of Rob, who I tapped to bring games, since mine are all at the Port of Oakland; Bob mentioned on the way down to San Martin that maybe we should ask Rob for games, and I told him I'd already taken care of it, because that was certain not something I was going to omit).

But the thing was, of course, this was the last one, and we all knew it. Kimberly and I will be in Hawaii next year, and we'll be reluctant to come back for Christmas because tickets will be expensive, and it'll be cold in the Bay Area; and meanwhile our nephew Julian will be two, and increasingly at the point where my sister-in-law Lisa will want to be making their home a Christmas center. But Kimberly and I both expressed that we enjoy Christmas with the Wiedlins so much that maybe we'll come back at Christmas some times ... but very likely not in 2020.

And, as I said, there were gifts. I got a light, breathable raincoat, thankfully replacing one that was getting increasingly ratty, and a few pairs of good-looking shorts, and of course my stocking stuffers. And I think everything else is waiting for us in Hawaii. My siblings told me about what sounds like an excess of books and games, which is exciting, though of course I'm still waiting to discover whether I can play my new games out there. Hopefully!

Somehow the day and a half just flew by, and before we knew it, we were heading back to Berkeley with Bob.

I often regret not staying longer, but Kimberly certainly stayed as long as she could, because she was exhausted and hurting and having seizures by the time she got home. Yowtch.

If Christmas Eve was challenging before we got out of Berkeley, the Day after Christmas has been, after we got back.

I woke up, showered, and immediately set to making the five phone calls I had scheduled: California-side health insurance (cancelled!); AT&T phone line for Skotos (cancelled!), Comcast (cancelled! though being the immoral scumbags that they are, they were the ones to try and make it hard); new internet in Hawaii (scheduled!), and Intuit (business address changed for Skotos!).

I was most of the way done with those when I had to run the cats to the vet. I hated having to stuff them into the soft carriers that we'll be using on the plane (because they're small, and because I didn't want to create bad memories of these carriers before the plane day), but as we'd planned, that's all we had in the house at this point. (It's not like the accidental times when we discovered we should have left something behind, such as when I tried to make Chili for Kimberly and discovered we had no can opener!). The object here was to get them health certificates and get them their flea treatment. And that was hopefully the last bureaucratic hurdle to get them to their new home of Kauai (though I need to touch bases with Alaska Airlines and with the Humane Society in Kauai before we leave to make sure that our t's remain dotted and our i's remain crossed).

And then after lunch I ran around to the five places on my schedule in Berkeley today: UPS Store (Comcast cable-card returned!), bank (Christmas checks deposited! thank you!), Goodwill (a cartful of stuff dropped off! along with the cart!), USPS (a few priority mail boxes picked up! in case we want to mail anything to Kauai!), and the library (books dropped off! though I still have five out! one of which is a novel that I really need to finish in the next four days, and am not sure I will! and more importantly, more garbage backs picked up! to be ripped up by the dangerous vagrants that our city council invites to our city!)

And meanwhile, our heat is out. Again.

Apparently the gas line supplying seven or so houses on our side of the road has mysteriously filled with water. I suspect the cuplrit is the EBMUD work that was going on right about where PG&E started to deal with the problem. We learned about the problem this morning, and 14 hours later, they're still working on it.

So for the second time in the December of our last year in California we've had a night without heat. Sigh. Our cats are cold, as are we.

Tonight was also our last Thursday night game. We got started a little early with Concordia (which most of the folks hadn't played yet), then continued with Wingspan (which we played and enjoyed last week). Two great games, both best-of-class or near so (though I continue to think that Wingspan over values its eggs, and would have a much better endgame is they scored half as much).

It was a great night, and the end of 18 or 19 years of gaming here on Thursday nights. Hopefully the folks will keep it going.

And I've got quite a bit of gaming scheduled these last few days. Tomorrow a few of us are jumping back to Curse of the Crimson Throne.

(And I just have to make sure the gaming doesn't interfere with my finishing to clear out the house, though I continue to make good strides with trashing stuff and Kimberly is doing well with getting things given away on Freecycle.

(And we're sadly no longer leaving most stuff out for "free" out front, because it seems to have attracted the wrong sort of attention.)

(And I'm hoping that I can keep the sickly ickies away while we're in California. A few folks were getting over colds down in San Martin, and the chill of our house this evening got Mike A. sniffling from a cold he'd thought he was over ... and doubtless the rest of Berkeley is sick too.)

It's been a busy week because I've had a few unusual things on my schedule.

Mus(ic)ing (Saturday). Last Saturday, Bob and mom came up to Berkeley to take Kimberly and me to a concert by Leo Kottke. He's an acoustic guitarist that Bob enjoys, and it was a fun performance, though I thought the highlight was when he brought in a local to accompany him on the violin. Now, I'm not a violin fan: it tends to be a little high-pitched and screechy for me, but the violinist was amazing. First, he did a solo which was unlike anything I'd heard before on a violin, then he accompanied Leo on several songs and offered an absolutely beautiful counterpoint, really enhancing and complementing Leo's playing.

The night overall was terrific because Bob and my mom showed up a few hours early and then we had a sushi dinner (something I almost never get, because Kimberly doesn't like Japanese food that much, and especially not sushi, but she was able to get something that wasn't raw). Then we got to talk for a few hours, because we waited out in line in front of the Freight & Salvage for an hour, then sat in our seats for an hour before the show began.

Kimberly and I actually went to the Freight and Salvage quite a bit in our early relationship, when it was down just off of San Pablo. But I can only remember continuing to see shows there through our time in North Berkeley. We stopped around the time we moved into our house. We'd definitely never been to the new theatre in the Arts District (though I was surprised to see it only opened in 2009; I would have guessed years earlier). I'm glad to we got to see the new venue. It's over twice the size of the old one and even though it's lost its artsy, semi-pro feel, it's instead attractively professional (and still bringing in great folk singers of all sorts).

Bonus Gaming (Monday). A few weeks ago, I got review copies of the new Pathfinder 2e game sets, so I invited my usual bonus PF crew (Eric L., Mike B., and Sam) over for a bonus game of the Core Set. It was interesting: more difficult than the original (and I wasn't sure if that made it less fun or not), but also featuring more evocative cards and stories. I definitely need to write up a review and a case study. However, what I found most notable was how much having people over for gaming on Monday night threw off my whole schedule. It felt like it was much later in the week than it actually was, and I was left off-balance. We're talking about finishing off the Core Set game, which would take another four bonus sessions, probably.

Swimming (Tuesday). On Tuesday night, Kimberly took me to the "Y" so that we could work on her swimming some more, now that she's graduated (at least for the moment) from Patti's Swim School. I used to have a "Y" membership in the early years of Skotos, so I'd seen the main pool many a time, and I always smell another of the pools whenever I walk by, but I don't think I've ever swum there. In the 21st century almost all of my swimming has been in Hawaiian waters (plus a pool in a bank vault in Berlin, which was neat). So, it was actually a different experience to go hang out in a chlorinated indoor pool. Boy the water was warm! (We were in the smaller pool near the street on Milvia, that I can always smell when I walk by, and Kimberly says it's the warmest.) Anywho, we worked on Kimberly's swimming and her side-breathing and then she did some of her PT exercises. We're going to try and make this a somewhat regular thing (or at least as regular as can be when there are just six and a half months left in our time here in the Bay Area).

Regular Gaming (Wednesday). And finally, I'll note my regular Wednesday night gaming at Secret, only to say that it's sadly been a lot quieter since I've been back from this year's vacation in April. Its attendees have mostly been confined to the old downstairs crew at Endgame, which included a few staff and other friends who used to hang out together. It's good to continue seeing them and gaming, but we're running about half the participants when we had the most popularity at Secret. I knew it was going to be challenging to get people continuing to attend without a game store attached. Might be time to try and remind people it's there.

I have a long tradition of taking off the week from Christmas to New Year's. And, I try to keep myself busy.

Saturday (the 22nd). I headed out to Walnut Creek where I spent Christmas money on new jeans and a new flannel overshirt. (Exciting!) Then I biked the Iron Horse Trail from Walnut Creek to Pleasanton/Dublin. I always like getting out and about on my weekends, but it's a little harder in the winter when it's cold. So, bike rides are preferred then, and it's usually a little warmer that side of the hills because there's less overcast.

Sunday (the 23rd). We saw the Wizard of Oz.

Monday. Kimberly's foot is still recovering, so we weren't up for a BART ride down south, but Bob was kind enough to pick us up to attend this year's Wiedlin gatherings. Christmas Eve was as always a fun mix of family, games, and tasty food. The only downside was that the dogs have gone wild in the last year. For some reason, Joy got upset at us staying in the guest room at the end of the long west-east hall in the house, and so every time Kimberly or I stepped out its door, she started barking up a storm and got Hope involved too.

Tuesday. We began Christmas with a tasty breakfast, as usual. We waited longer than usual for Jason and Lisa, but that's because they have a new child. Kimberly and I met our first nephew, Julian. And he was mostly a lump, spending all his time nursing, sleeping, and having his nappies changed. But as Lisa said, he's in the potato stage. We had good Christmas presenting. I got great books, great games, a nice pull-over sweater, and other things. We played more games, had a good evening dinner, and then Rob was kind enough to drive us all the way back to Berkeley (at which point Kimberly and I had our own stockings and presents).

Wednesday. During the day I took my hiking shoes out to a shoe repair store, because I'd rubbed through the backs, unmasking the plastic pain devices under the fabric in the heel. But, the soles still have a lot of life, so repair was the answer. (Exciting!) Then, I went to the last night of Endgame board gaming.

Thursday. Definitely, my laziest day of the holiday. I lounged around the house reading and napping until dinner time, at which point I read a bit to Kimberly (we're still on Hawaii, but drawing near the end). Then, I had my friends over for a couple of games of Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Mummy's Mask.

Friday. We always see a movie around Christmas, and this year we chose Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse. We decided to see it down at Bay Street, and that caused problems because they've made the rather ill-considered decision to go over to reserved seats in their theatres. So (1) we couldn't properly reserve seats that would have accounted for Kimberly's scooter; (2) we had to reserve in advance and thus pay their $3.50 "convenience charge" to guarantee ourselves anything like good seats; and (3) we got to watch people call in the management to evict people from the seats they'd stolen as we were trying to watch previews. Good times. (Well, the previews sucked anyway: they were all either very religious or very kid-focused.) But the movie rocked. One of the best super-hero films I've ever seen. Not only did it have great and funny writing, not only did it to a great job with a whole host of Spider-men, but it also made excellent use of the animated form.

Saturday. For my last Saturday of the holiday, I came up with a great adventure: taking BART out to Pittsburg Central to explore Black Diamond Mines. The BART ride went one stop beyond the old Pittsburg Station, on the new "DMU" trains that have totally squandered the potential of BART in Eastern CoCoCo. You have to change trains at a special platform east of Pittsburg, and you hop into a teeny, lightweight car that feels like it's held together with paper clips and tinfoil. Despite claims that there would be space for bikes in the DMUs, neither one I got into had anywhere for bikes, so I had to stand there awkwardly, holding my bike for five minutes each way. From Pittsburg Center it was a five-mile bike ride to Contra Loma Reservoir, and from there I walked up into the Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve, where I did a several-mile loop. It was mostly empty and there were some nice vistas, and I got to explore one of the "mines", a 400-foot tunnel that failed to find coal. I went about 100 feet in before I got too spooked by the possibility of rattlesnakes hanging out. Overall, it was a nice day, though I was home late.

Sunday. We completed our trilogy of media when we saw Arcadia.

Monday. And I ended my holiday with a gaming day out in Eastern CoCoCo with two Erics. In recent years, I've done more biking and hiking during the holidays, but gaming may be something I'm missing in Kauai. So, we played Near and Far, Thunderstone, and Ghost Stories to end out the year. Then I came home on BART, feverishly finished my year-end RPG review and Kimberly and I drank some Martinelli's to mark our penultimate year in the Bay Area.

I'm pretty sure that the first time I ever came to Berkeley, it was to see a Go-Gos concert. I only have the vaguest memories of it, and it's not the concert I remember, it's walking down the hill afterward, along some asphalt road, with hundreds of other concert goers ranging about us. I've always assumed that was walking down the hill from the Greek, through the Berkeley campus.

I think I met Jane for the first time that day. Again, I'm not sure. I know that she was super sweet and she gave me a little handheld Donkey Kong game that she said she'd gotten in Japan. I literally played it until it was falling apart, and then I superglued it and played it some more.

Memories have a weird way of conflating themselves, and so I've come to assume that first Berkeley experience must have been not long before I came to Berkeley for college, but obviously that's wrong because Jane left the Go-Gos in late 1984. Unshockingly, the web now has the answers. The Go-Go's played at the Greek twice, once in August 1982 and once in September 1984. I'd guess it must have been the 1982 concert, if I really was meeting Jane for the first time, especially since there was a Japan tour in the months prior, but that seems so impossibly long ago. It could have been 1984 instead, if J. got left with a baby-sitter. Whichever one, I find it kind of amazing now that I got to see one of their concerts while they were at the peak of their popularity and success.

I was the most connected to the Wiedlin family in the '80s, when we were constantly going down to LA for Wiedlin kid weddings and Wiedlin holidays. One of my strongest memories is Bob and Betty so proudly showing off one of the Go-Go's videos, perhaps even before it hit MTV. There were so proud of Jane's success.

I was disappointed that K. and I missed the Go-Go's Farewell tour of a few years ago, so I was thrilled to hear that they were doing a show this year at the Fox in Oakland — apparently a little "test" show, in advance of them playing at the much larger Hollywood Bowl next week (Fox Theatre: 2,800 seats; Hollywood Bowl: 17,500). It also felt like a personal bookend for me, remembering my first visit to Berkeley just a year and a half before we're planning to leave.

The other bonus: K. and I had been wanting to see the Fox since it reopened in 2009, after being neglected for the entirety of our lives: it had "temporarily" closed in 1965, then permanently in 1970, and since had been a site of arson and massive homeless squatting, and was even flagged for demolition in the late '70s.

So on Thursday evening after dinner, K. and Lyfted down to Uptown to see the Go-Go's.

The Fox Theatre is indeed beautiful inside. There are high ceilings and all of the architecture has a Middle-Eastern feel to it (well, except some soulless modern additions, but they're to the outsides). The main theatre itself is amazingly vast. It was really one of those places that felt bigger on the inside than the outside, like there was this whole secret world inside the Fox that I've biked by hundreds of times without ever knowing. And, the heart of the theatre is also the heart of its beauty, with a gorgeous patterned ceiling and secret box seats off to the sides, and iconic Middle-eastern gods (or buddhas or something) to the sides of the stage.

We had seats that were pretty high up. I wasn't price-concerned, but only the cheap seats were left when I got our tickets. Still, we had a good view of the stage.

And momentarily it was filled with blasting rock music.

The opening band ... well, it was clear that they were influenced by the Go-Go's, and that sort of legacy is pretty cool. But they were mostly 45 long minutes of cacophony.

Hearing the Go-Go's again, though, that was very cool.

I kinda forget that a rock concert isn't exactly about hearing the music, or at least not all the words. It's instead a deafeningly loud and immersive experience where you're shaken by the music, where you fill in the words because you know them. So, I enjoyed songs like Vacation, We Got the Beat, Our Lips Our Sealed, This Town, and others that I'm familiar with. K. and I both agree that the best song was Cool Places, which is of course heresy because it's not a Go-Go's song. (It's a Jane and Sparks song, but I've always liked many of Jane's songs better than the Go-Go's.) They even choreographed it so that Jane and Belinda danced across the stage much like the singers danced in the music video from 1983.

The reason that we got seats up in the balconies of the Fox, instead of on the main floor is because that's where you go if you want to sit down. But this being a rock concert, the crowd was of course on their feet by the second song, which was Vacation. I reluctantly rose to my feet. I didn't want to contribute to the whole wave of people being forced to stand up because the people in front of them did, but I wanted to see the Go-Go's. Poor K. couldn't though, because of her bad foot. So she saw watched peoples backs for about half the show. (Fortunately, Cool Places was one of the songs when people were sitting down.)

When I stood up though, I did start dancing to the music with the rest of the crowd, and at the best of times I lost myself in it. That's one of the reasons I like music, and especially live shows of music I know. It's about the only time I can make my brain totally stop, when I just start swaying to the music and singing the words that I remember. It was nice.

And, the concert was very nostalgic. Not exactly for the Go-Go's per se. But for my tween and teen years. For a memory of a very young, skinny me with huge glasses wearing a black Go-Go's shirt. For the memory of this trips down to Bob's parents house up above LA.

It was so very long ago.

K. unfortunately did not have nearly as good of an experience at the concert. The crowds and sounds and light were too much for her. Alas :(.

Kimberly and I were in Hawaii on Mother's Day, but we were very happy to get together with my mom today, when she came up to Berkeley.

There was an ulterior motive: my mom was interested in a store called Paco Collars, which makes fancy semiprecious-encrusted leather collars for dogs (and cats ... and matching bracelets and belts for people). Some of her friends had ordered collars from there, but she wanted to see it in person to really get to pick one out up close and personal. With, of course, the new pup Joy. Who is now about twice as big as she was when we saw her at Christmas.

Kimberly and I have actually gone by the store any number of times, because it's down on Shattuck just across from Berkeley Bowl, but we'd never previously gone in. Now we did, with mom and pup.

It's a cute little shop, with much of the front set aside with a gate to keep dogs in, so that you can take them off leash and test out the collars. My mom was looking for purple-and-gray, to match her flyball team's colors, and customer service rep Phoebe was able to construct her precise collar as we waited. It was pretty cool local craftsmanship.

Meanwhile, Kimberly was won over by the bracelets, and my mom got her one of those with a melody of Kimberly's favorite colors. Or rather, she ordered her one, as they didn't have leather in quite the right size and color. But unlike my mom, Kimberly can just go over and pick it up, as she's right by there every week.

So mission successful!

Next stop was lunch. Realizing that we'd have a bundle of Joy with us, I'd spent part of the morning researching dog-friendly restaurants in the Berkeley area. I settled on Picante, a Mexican restaurant in north Berkeley, because they seemed super-dog-friendly with a large patio and even posted signs about how dogs could be good patrons. (It included a prohibition against licking the plates, which is of course something that no Wiedlin dog would ever do.) And, it turned out, it was the place Kimberly and I had eaten at when we were picking out tiles for our bathroom remodel last December.

We had good food. And good company.

Our one other plan for the day was a hike with Joy. But not Kimberly, because she still has a broken foot, even if she's a bit more mobile than before as long as she uses her boot.

So, we dropped Kimberly off, then drove up to the steam trains at Tilden.

We walked from there along the ridge line, and then back via some of the other paths. I'd estimated it at about 2 hours, but it was closer to 3. It was a bit longer than the mileage on the map indiciates, and I also learned that walking with a dog slows things down, at least if you're respectful of the dog's desire to smell everything (and we were).

It was extremely windy, the windiest I've ever seen it up there. I at least was grateful of times that we were in the areas with more coverage, and not in the wind all the time.

But I got to show my mom the fabulous sites up there, that I've walked by many a time, including San Pablo Reservoir, Brionnes Reservoir, and of course the views out across the Bay, from Yerba Buena Island and San Francisco, up to the Golden Gate, and the Marin Headlands and Angel Island.

I got a little turned around on the way back, because we weren't walking my usual paths. And, I made the mistake of depending on Google Maps, rather than the map of the park that I had right in my water bottle carrier. The problem is that Google Maps sometimes shows routes that are somewhat "unofficial".

So, we got back to the Vollmer Peak area OK, which is almost to the steam trains parking lot, but Google showed us what turned out to be a "shortcut" between two segments of the Vollmer Peak Trail. It seemed a bit overgrown at first, got moreso from time to time, and also had several short bits that were quite steep. I took Joy so that she wouldn't be pulling my mom over on these steep areas, and we managed.

My mom says she was whining about the trail, but she totally wasn't. She commented that the trail was unruly, I agreed that it sucked, and she gamely continued on, and even mentioned that when we'd gotten lost out biking or hiking when I was young, she always said it was an adventure.

So, we had a short little adventure.

We were both pretty happy when we got back to the real trail, and I think we were both pretty tired by the time we got back to the car.

A nice day overall, and great to have mom up here for the day.

It was a busy weekend.

Saturday was gaming. Although I decided to end my frequently futile attempts to run my Burning Wheel campaign, Donald, Mary, Kevin, maybe Dave S., and I have decided to try out a campaign-style board game. I put out some options, Mary added Time Stories, and then we voted:

1. SEAFALL, 14
2. Time Stories, 13
2. Pandemic Legacy Season 1, 13
4. PACG: Rise of the Runelords, 12
4. Charterstone, 12
6. PACG: Rise of the Runelords, 11

All pretty close, but we decided to try out SeaFall on Saturday. It's a 4X Legacy game by Rob Daviau with plenty of American influences (which seems to be one of the things that put eurogamers off, the other being poor development).

I was certainly leery the first time I went to rip a card up, when I didn't know if this would be a successful, continuing game, but I verified with everyone that they were having fun and enjoying the campaign and then rip I did.

Overall, we had fun. There was some great exploration, which is particularly fun because you get to mark up what you find on the map, some fun dice chucking (with one horrible result for me: blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, success — which sank my ship, and which was very unlikely given there are two blanks on each six-sided die), and some interesting storytelling.

From the one play of the beginning set rules, I don't think SeaFall is a great game, but it's a good game that gains weight through its Legacy elements, and I'm looking forward to how that plays out.

This was just the prologue, with changes to the map, but no long-term success or failure for us as players. It was looking like six weeks until our second game, but we managed to slot in a special game on May 5th, just before K. and I go on our family vacation. So, we should get to reinforce our knowledge of the rules pretty quickly.

Sunday was visiting. My mom, Bob, and Rob came up to see us and celebrate K. and my's birthday. For some reason the south campus area was jammed on Sunday (I think there was something going on at the stadium), so we headed out immediately for an early dinner at Chevy's.

There was much enjoyable talking and eating, some margaritas, and then we came home for cake.

It was great seeing everyone.

I did minor walking on the weekend. Nothing big, but I wanted to get out and move both days, rather than just staying home while people came to me.

So I walked Strawberry Creek a bit before gaming, then up in the hills afterward, then I walked in the hills again after lunch on Sunday.

However my other main activity of the weekend (and one that consumed both evenings, plus Sunday before folks showed up) was studying. I'm auditing a Bitcoin programming course on Tuesday and Wednesday, as part of Chris' and my continued attempt to collect blockchain knowledge that we can disseminate, but then I was asked if I could help TA it too.

I was happy to, as I've got two or three years of Bitcoin knowledge and tech writing under my belt at this point, but it turned out to be more challenging than I expected.

First up, it's taught in Python, which is a programming language I don't know.

Second, that meant that I should really be familiar with as much of the course's exercises as possible.

So my studying consisted of flipping back and forth between a book on Python and working on the exercises. As of this moment, on Monday evening, I'm 7 chapters into the book (out of 16, but I probably won't finish it) and 6 exercises sets into the course (out of 8, and that I hope to finish before the second day of the course).

Whew. Exhausting; I'm tired out even before getting up early enough to be in the city by 8.30 on Tuesday.

And we'll see if my studying was good enough to actually offer meaningful help to others tomorrow.

Two more days of busyness to come.

This year we enjoyed what's become our pretty standard Christmas. We went down to San Martin and enjoyed a day and a half there with Wiedlins.

The big difference this year was, of course, Kimberly's broken foot, which deterred us from using public transit, which means another year gone by without using the Warm Springs BART station. Rob came to the rescue with a ride from Berkeley to San Martin (in just 75 minutes!) then Jason drove us back home.

There was a lot of great hanging out with family. Lots of games of Ping Pong. Several tasty meals. Quite a few board and card games (including a half-dozen games of No Thanks!.)

Bob suggested a movie late on Christmas Eve. We angsted a bit about a choice, and then discovered that The Nightmare Before Christmas was on Netflix, so I suggested that. Kimberly, Rob, and I all enjoyed it, but my Mom and Bob, neither of whom had seen it before, wandered off within 30 minutes. Heathens! (Tired heathens.)

Mom has a new pup, Joy, and she was joyful. Well, other than the submissive peeing. But other than that, she was super cute and super active and super cuddly.

Sadly, I don't think she'll be a puppy by the next time I see her!

There were presents, of course, and that was nice, as always. I think I usually adore the stockings most, even though they're mostly candy and knickknacks, because there's something very Christmasy bout them.

I got a new Fitbit Charge 2, which looks to be much more reliable than the awful Charge HR, and some great books (one of which, Oathbringer, I've already started), and some super-comfy looking hiking socks, and some MP3s, and some other stuff.

We headed home late on Christmas Day, as usual, though there was some drama here, as we got out to the car and Jason learned that the keys had gone home with his wife. Whoops!

Rob gallantly picked up the keys and came all the way back to San Martin (with the keys) to set us free.

Back at home, Kimberly and I had our own Christmas. With our own stockings (my work this year) and our own presents.

I got some nice t-shirts from Kimberly, the first of which (a Cthulhu shirt) I'm already wearing. I've been admiring it all day.

I got Kimberly a variety of things. She seemed quite happy with her 11 Vinyl Figure (from Stranger Things and her Introvert Activity Book (which I hoped would give her fun stuff to do while she has a broken foot).

We got the cats toys, which they played with briefly.

And some freeze-dried shrimp, which they loved.

And that was the end of our two days of Christmas.

Usually we follow that up with our Christmas movie, on one of the next few days, but this year we stole a march and watched The Last Jedi on the Friday before Christmas.

Great movie! Yay!

And we got to talk about it with family, all of whom had seen it already.

I woke up this morning, the Tuesday after Christmas, and thought, "I don't have to do ANYTHING today."

Bliss!

Mind you, I dropped a book off at the library, picked up things at the drug store, pick up packages at the UPS store, edited a D&D history, took notes for yet another, conducted and edited an interview with Steve Jackson, and wrote this.

But I didn't have to!

But soon it's back to activity: I'm planning a hike for Wednesday and a Pathfinder ACG day for Thursday.

Further out, plans are nebulous, though Chris has requested a long-game gaming day, which I'm trying to coordinate (without as much success), and K. I and have talked about a light show or a museum ... but of course her foot will be the limiting factor.

And too, too soon this week of not worrying about stuff will be over.

Welcome to week four, and how is the new year going?

I must admit to a bit of existential dread about the new president. I mean, surely we've had pathological liars in the White House before, though none so obvious. But it's really the combination of that lying with a high level of incompetence and a certainty that he's right that's scary. It's like Dan Quayle rose up to power, but if he was also a narcissistic, self-centered man-child.

The existential dread is the big picture stuff, and I look at the headlines with fear every morning at what he's done today. I've actually had to sign off of a few progressive mailing lists, because what they were sending out was pure FUD that wasn't helping my mood.

But it's the specific stuff that's even scarier. I'm the most worried about health care. Are my costs going to double in the next decade as the CBO has predicted if the Republicans have their way? Am I going to be out of insurance? The damnedest thing is that I'm pretty healthy. I mean, if I had such horrible insurance that it only covered catastrophes, my life probably wouldn't change. I can't even imagine folks that's not true for.

I've lost two of my familial elders since the New Year, heck since the inauguration: Bob's dad (my step-grandfather) and my Aunt Peg.

I probably knew Bob the elder better. We drove down to Los Angeles a number of times when I was growing up, to spend time with Bob's family, and he was the patriarch of the house.

I probably knew August Peg less well, because she lived out in St. Louis, but she was one of the family members delighted to see me when I visited summers long gone.

And all the losses diminish us. It's a somber start to the year.

OK, perking up.

It looks like our recent roof work was successful, as the torrential downpour of the last week didn't cause new leaks. Yay. And they're going to come back in to stucco over the wounds where our water heater was removed last year, after one of our last house problems (sigh!), which will be another thing off our list-of-stressors and our list-of-things-that-must-be-done-before-we-leave-this-house.

Our recent bathroom work was more so-so. I'm hoping that the handyman fixed the leaking problem we had since last year by grouting over the bottom half of the tiles in our bathroom. Our wall has definitely stopped leaking, I'm less sure about under the house. But the grout is much darker than what's on the other half of the tiles. And it looks really grainy. And there was grit all over the tiles. Days later we've got the grit mostly off, and I'm hoping a sealant will make the stucco itself look smoother and better. But the variegated look of the top and bottom of our tile is annoying.

Speaking of rain, I'm well and sick it. It's greatly impacted my exercise over the last few months. I've been getting 50k or so steps a week instead of my goal of 70k and my more typical excess of more than that. Oh, that's been partly the cold too. Altogether it just hasn't been that nice going out on weekends or evenings or whatever.

I've been trying to figure out alternative ways to exercise, but the success has been somewhat limited.

But, yay, we're heading out of our drought.

The state water regulators, meanwhile, talked about extending our drought restrictions during one of the heaviest days of rain after days of rain. Because they have no sense of irony. Or too much sense of irony. But that's generally their modus operandi.

Work has been good since the new year. I feel like the week off helped me get my mojo back, so I've been bouncing around, putting finishing projects on various projects that have been long standing, and feeling good about it.

I'm getting a bit more weighed down this week, because various people all want my attention. I suppose that's to the good, but less bouncy.

So that's 2017 so far. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Trump is the ugly.

A Night at the Movies (Friday: 23). Kimberly and I rarely go the movies, but Christmas is our definitive goto movie day, because that's what we did on several Christmas days in the '00s when we were keeping to ourselves. So we went a bit early this year, and saw Rogue One right after I knocked off work on Friday. Great Star Wars movie; one of the best. Great characters, great development. Yes, its tone is different, but it had a tone of sacrifice and danger that I think is missing from many of the core films.

The Journey Home (Saturday: 24). We got up bright and early on Saturday to go down to San Marteen for the holiday. That's been our pattern the last few years and it's been quite nice staying over and having Christmas with the folks. But it's quite long to BART down to Fremont, then drive to San Marteen: over an hour and a half. I keep praying for the southern BART stations to open, but Warm Springs BART is entering its third year behind schedule. It's apparently been built, but they're losing trains between Fremont and Warm Springs. Theoretically, Berryessa is going to also open in 2017, which is the exciting one because it's right next to many folks I know, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Tichu! (Saturday+: 24+). We often play games while down in San Marteen, and this time around I brought Tichu because the Wiedlins are big card-playing folks. Rob, my Mom, Bob, and I played a couple of games on Saturday, and it went over great. (Then Jason and Kimberly joined us for a game on Sunday.) Well, Bob had some rather humorous problems distinguishing the phoenix and the dragon; I'm not convinced he realized they were separate cards at first and he never quite figured out their scoring and use. But even with that, everyone enjoyed the game, and I believe multiple folks wanted to get their own copies. (In fact, my siblings later made up their own deck for New Years!) It's definitely going into my bag regularly for future South Bay trips (except that I need to get a fresh copy soon, as mine is pretty worn from ~20 games).

I Am the Ping Pong King! Ko-ko-kachu. (Saturday+: 24+). There is always ping pong at the Wiedlin household, and I managed to remain undefeated against Bob, Rob, and Jason. (Well, undefeated in two-out-of-three sets; two of them came down to the rubber match.) I'll also admit that two of my opponents were somewhat intoxicated due to the beer & pizza from just beforehand. Probably primarily from the beer.

It's Starting to Feel a Lot Like Christmas (Sunday: 25). Christmas morning at the Wiedlin house is fun and chaotic. Stockings for us kids and lots of presents that everyone is crazily opening their prezzies simultaneously. There was much loot, including a nice windbreaker, a nice jacket, some hiking shoes (all successfully tried out!), and a few games. Thanks parents and siblings!

Farm, Farm on the Range (Sunday+: 25+). One of the presents I got from Rob was Stardew Valley, a computer game that I'd mentioned, that he then ran out and gifted to me on Steam. I'd heard good things about this roleplaying farm-sim, and occasionally I play extensively through a game over my holiday break. This seemed like a good time to return to that old habit. Steam says I played it for over 20 hours, so it's definitely a success (and speaks well to my relaxing over the holiday!).

It's Starting to Feel a Lot Like Christmas II (Sunday: 25). At home, late on Sunday night, Kimberly and I had our own Christmas. There were more stockings (prepared by her this year, with just a little help from me because she was feeling time-crunched) and more prezzies. Nice Hawaiian shirts, a TARDIS mug, and more wonderful Kimberly-created bookmarks. Yay.

Hike Any Mountain (Monday: 26). On my Monday back from San Marteen I needed some restful, relaxation time, so I did my most common medium-length hike up in the hills behind us. I walk up to the rear of Strawberry Canyon and then loop back over the top of Panoramic Hill. It's about two hours, has a nice ascent, and great views. I also wanted to try out my new hiking shoes, and they worked great. No slipping, nor sliding, not even after I hiked down some places that usually give me problems.

A Night at the Movies II (Monday: 26). I got Kimberly a few DVDs for Christmas, and we watched one of them Monday night: JasonBourne. She was a big fan of the first three, and I'm happy to say we were both quite pleased with the fifth-ish one. It was nice to see Bourne's super competence expressed in a new way, through more thoughtful and tactical work. We had some problems with the pile of coincidences implicit in the main antagonist, but other than that, this was a fine movie. I have no idea why Rotten Tomatoes rates it exactly the same as The Bourne Legacy (the pseudo fourth movie), because that was a big "Who Cares?" while this was entirely enjoyable and provided some nice closure.

The MOMA Has No Clothes (Tuesday: 27). Imagine a room filled with black sand. On the opposite wall is a shattered mirror. Off to another side is a picture of a hand holding a bean, way up on the wall where it's hard to see. A voice intones deeply accented gibberish. Wait, there's no need to imagine, because this crap is actually an installation at the MOMA in San Francisco. AKA, the sort of crap that gives modern art a bad name. Also there, giving modern art a bad name: a pile of red, white and blue bicycles, a triptych of entirely white canvases, an entirely black canvas, and an entirely blue canvas. MOMA should be ashamed of displaying that sort of thing. But we also saw great mobiles by Alex Calder, interesting cityscapes made up of individual photos, some other nice collages, and a beautiful set of dodecahedrons made with string and some sort of metal. It was an enjoyable four(!) hours at the MOMA, but probably our last visit while we live in California.

It's Starting to Feel a Lot Like Christmas III (Wednesday: 28). Melody and Jared visited us on Wednesday to complete our trilogy of Christmases. We talked, we ate at Chevy's, and we exchanged gifts for gift cards.

Game On! (Wednesday: 28). This year I've mostly been coming home from EndGaming pretty early, because Kimberly has been going to bed early, but on Wednesday I splurged and told Kimberly I'd be home after she was asleep. As a result I got to play two long games: Orleans: Invasion and Key Harvest. Yay! It was a lot of fun!

Park Place (Thursday: 29). Kimberly and I like occasionally going out to Golden Gate Park, getting Andronico's sandwiches, eating them, and wandering around. So we did that on Thursday. I have a new appreciation for the park since I've been to New York, as it's so different from Central Park. It protects you from the city, whereas Central Park feels like a big bowl with city all around. Anywho, we walked around, and I kept getting turned around. It was fun. On our way out I climbed Strawberry Hill, and was impressed by the views.

On the Seventh Day He Rested (Friday: 30). After six days of running about, I mostly relaxed at home on Friday. Though I must admit I did a short climb above Clark Kerr (my 60-minute or so super-short walk up in the hills). And we ate dinner out. And we got groceries.

These Shoes Were Made For Walking (Saturday: 31). I had a casual morning on Saturday, but after lunch I decided to head out to Briones Reservoir, an EBMUD area that I've been wanting to explore for a while. Google tricked me into thinking Bear Creek Trail went right out to Bear Creak Road, but all that was there was an inaccessible fire trail. So instead it was another .6 miles up the road and 300 feet of ascent, which tired me out before the walk. The actual Reservoir is gorgeous with great hillside trails looping around it. And it was entirely empty due to EBMUD's policy of making it as hard as possible for people to use their trails. And best of all, there were benches every mile or so. I only walked about a mile and half out (then the same back), but I now really want to figure out how to walk the whole reservoir. It's 12.5 miles, or 14.5 if I don't bike up that steep hill, so it'll take some stamina and a full day. Maybe in Spring.

A Final Gift from 2016 (Saturday: 31). While I was out hiking, Kimberly was sickening with the flu. Thanks 2016, you rock.

Writing Like He's Running Out of Time (Saturday+: 24+). And finally, writing. In recent years, I've used my last week of the year to write really extensively, but this year (shocker) I decided to mostly relax instead. Oh, I did write whenever I was on a BART train, and there were quite a few. So I got a few histories done going to Fremont and back and bits and pieces on my other trips. But I'm probably a bit behind going into the new year. But, this post is done. My 2016 index for Mechanics & Meeples is done. My 2016 RPG year in review needs a double-check for important stuff and an edit and it's done. And then I need to see if it's possible to get a week ahead on my histories like I'd hope.

But carefully. I wouldn't want to lose my week of R&R.

As we closed in on lunchtime on the Friday after Thanksgiving I was determined to find myself a tasty sandwich that I could eat up in the hills above Berkeley.

But Cheese 'n Stuff was closed. So was IB Hoagies. I finally decided to walk all the way up to North Berkeley to get a delicious Andronico's sandwich.

Truth to tell, I hadn't even expected to be back in Berkeley on Friday morning.

One day earlier. We headed out to BART at a quarter 'til 10 on Thursday, for Thanksgiving down in San Marteen. It's the first time we've had Thanksgiving there in I dunno how long, and I think it happened primarily because I quizzed early about plans in San Marteen rather than just waiting and then making our own plans up here when things were getting toward the last moment. So, yay.

K. and I packed pills and toiletries and clothes to stay over night, though we weren't definite about doing so. That's foreshadowing about that whole not-expecting-to-be-in-Berkeley-on-Friday bit.

Jason picked us up in Fremont, because the Warm Springs BART station, now two years late, still hasn't happened. We got to see his new house on the way to San Marteen. It seemed very nice.

Then we were down to San Marteen by noon or so, which was great. There was talking and ping ponging and then dinner around 2.30. More talking and some football watching (which I find interesting enough though it's never something I'd do on my own) and some gaming with Between Two Cities and Dixit. It was feeling like late evening by the time Jason and Lisa and Rob were all planning to head out, but it was only 6 or 7 or something, which was pretty cool — getting such a full day in and still having evening ahead of us.

I was somewhat concerned about staying overnight because of the fact that the heat wasn't working at Casa Wiedlin in San Marteen. There were fires and heaters going all over the house and it was keeping it from being super cold. But I thought it was going to be pretty cold in the morning.

But then there was the pumpkin pie incident.

K. awoke from her post-turkey stupor, ate pumpkin pie, and got sick from it. So we ultimately decided to head home on Thursday night so she could be sick there instead of at someone else's house.

Rob drove us, so we got to talk to both brothers on different car trips.

The Warm Springs BART extension still wasn't open, so he took us up to Fremont.

Friday, I did get my sandwich at Andronico's.

Another side effect of the is-it-a-holiday-or-is-it-not problem of Black Friday was that AC Transit was running a weekday schedule. So I had to hike all the way up to Euclid to catch a bus, and it didn't deliver me quite into Tilden.

But I had a nice lunch in Tilden, then I wrote for a while, then I walked all the way home from there: up through southern Tilden, around Strawberry Canyon, and then down Panoramic Hill. Somewhere over 10 miles total, the exact sort of nice hike in the hills that I'd been wanting for a few weeks.

Saturday was gaming, our first full session of Burning Wheel play. We're still at that uncomfortable point where we're learning a game system, and Burning Wheel is quite complex, which means we'll be there for a while.

But, the gears kept turning and we continued our development of our story.

The AP of our game so far is here though I haven't added this week's session yet. As always, there are too many things to write. (More on that momentarily.)

Sunday was rest (and writing). But after some early afternoon naps, K. and I put up our Christmas tree.

This is an artificial tree that K. found after last year's sawing-the-tree-in-half debacle. Putting the new tree together and spreading out all the branches took forever and was quite exhausting, but I compared it to going across town to pick out a tree, and it wasn't too bad. And that was on top of moving various book cases and a cat tree out of the way to provide space for the christmas tree. And moving a cat out of the way, as Callisto kept insisting on jumping on the top of the cat tree whenever it stopped for a moment in its movements. This made things particularly difficult when the cat tree had to go through low doorways.

After all that, the hanging of lights and ornaments was pretty easy.

So there's now a nice tree in the corner of our living room. Callisto has only made one mad rush at it so far, threatening that she might climb straight up it.

Also busyness this weekend: writing, writing, writing.

Prep for Saturday adventure (due Friday night; done). I had fun detailing places and people in our city of Eligium, starting to create the modern basis of our world.
Edits and expansions of three Pathfinder ACG strategy articles (due Sunday night; done).
This journal entry (done).
AP for Saturday's game (due before I forget things; in process).
Four D&D Classic histories (due Monday night; three and a half drafted).
One Prince Valiant encounter (due Tuesday night; half done).
A very long Catan gamopedia (in process).

Whew.

Kimberly and I have birthdays that are four days apart, so we often end up having a birthday week with continued celebrations over that time period.

The year, that started on Thursday. I was working (because I'll be taking vacation soon enough), but Kimberly and I had a lunch out at Smart Alec's, then in the evening I had Mike B. and Eric L. over for Pathfinder ACG. It was a nice compromise between work and relaxation. And Mike was really sweet at gaming. He brought over tons of deserts made of dark chocolate, peanut butter, and mint, and even a new Miskatonic mug for me.

Kimberly and I usually have dinner out on Friday night, so this Friday I planned to go to Le Regal, my favorite Vietnamese restaurant in the area. Except it had gone out of business last October. Dammit. The funny thing is that Kimberly and I have commented several times on the business that's replacing it, "Le Halal Guys". Their Coming Soon sign says "We Are Different" on it, and that has constantly cracked us up because Oasis Grill, which also sells gyros, is literally two doors down. Anywho, we'd never realized that that the Halal Guys sign was in the old Regal storefront. There's some lesson in there about familiarity or contempt or some such crap. Looking at the storefront again today we realized that the old Le Regal icon is still (sadly) on the door.

We ended up going to Angeline's instead, a kick-ass Louisiana Kitchen. I'd been avoiding picking that for my b-day dinner because I'm not supposed to be eating spicy foods right now, but what can you do? (I at least ordered my shrimp po'boy without hot sauce.)

And then today we had the Wiedlins up to Berkeley. We hung out and talked for a bit then went down to Chevy's. (No spicy stuff? Well, mostly, I mean it was Chevy's.) Funny story: it was hard to find a restaurant that could accommodate the seven of us and was open on Easter. Kimberly suggested Giovanni's, but they burned down last year. (There's been a rash of burning restaurants in Berkeley this year.) We also tried La Med, but they were somewhat surprisingly closed for Easter. Then there was Remy's, where it took two phone calls and two people before I could even find someone to tell me they were closed on Easter.

But I did find Chevy's was open, so I made reservations back on Thursday, to make sure they would have a table for our party. And of course they'd lost them by the time we got there today. (Fortunately we were eating at 3pm, so they had space anyway. And fortunately no one seemed to have told them it was Kimberly's and my birthdays, as there was no singing at the table.)

Overall, nice weekend. Nice getting together with family, with friends, and hanging out with Kimberly. (And hiking on my own yesterday, of which I have already writ.)

I do feel like I ate just a little too much bad stuff over the weekend, between spiciness and caffeine (from chocolate), and I can tell it a tiny bit tonight, but hopefully I haven't set myself back as I'm pretty sick of feeling off-kilter and not biking.

But it was a nice few days of b-day.

That's the bulk of birthdaying, but we'll get a little bit of food tomorrow night in commemoration of Kimberly's actual birthday, then she'll be picking somewhere nice for next Friday.

So the holiday season is officially over. I was back at work on Friday, even if it's the weekend now.

The Wiedlin Christmas. Kimberly and I went down to San Marteen on Christmas Eve. That's a grueling three hour or so trip by foot, by BART, and finally by car. I'd been hoping that Warm Springs BART would be open by this Christmas. (It was supposed to be.) Alas, no, we're still stuck in Fremont, which is not just several miles further north, but also quite a ways from the highway. (If you were designing a public transit end point, wouldn't you want to put it near the highway??)

As has been the case the last few years, we spent Christmas Eve with my mom, Bob, and Rob, with shrimp dinner as prelude, then board games afterward. (This year, Between Two Cities was well-received.)

My mom has three guest rooms in her house (one of which is mostly an office), and we've now slept in all of them due to various siblings being in various rooms for the long-haul at various times. We should unlock some sort of achievement.

It's nice staying over the night, then having a family Christmas in the morning (when Jason and Lisa show up from their other-family festivities). We had stockings and presents. Afterward Kimberly and I went with folks to walk dogs on The Loop, then I went to bike with Bob, who had a new bike. Then there was a tiny bit of game playing. (Jason can not read game rules!) Then a more traditional Christmas dinner, then an hour or so of Ping Pong. (I'm always surprised that I can still play decently well, with my once-a-year playing.) It was a very active Christmas, which would be foreshadowing for the whole holiday.

Jason insisted on giving us a ride all the way back home, which means it was only a 2-hour trek home (but 4 hours for him!).

The Mini Appel Christmas. Towarder the end of the holiday, Melody and Jared came and visited us. We talked, had lunch at Smart Alec's, talked, and exchanged some presents. They had to move their cars every two hours due to Berkeley's fascist parking laws (laws that they're now talking about extending to evenings and weekends, which I suspect would be the end of me being able to host gaming at my house). Any who, the Appel christmas was nice.

The Christmas Tree Ordeal. By the time Christmas came around, our tree was quite dry, the result of us having picked it up a few days after Thanksgiving. So we took it down the Monday afterward. That turned out to be a lot of work. The hardest bit was getting the slats of wood and tub off the base of the tree. That required screwdrivers, a hammer, and lots of prying. It took two of us and some trickery to get the final nail out of the center of everything. Then I had to cut the top couple of feet off the tree so it'd get picked up. That last work didn't seem as impossible, but took some hard effort.

So, we've now had the entire adult Christmas experience.

Shortly afterward, Kimberly ordered an artificial tree for next year.

The Other Stuff. We saw Star Wars and enjoyed it greatly (though I thought it hit too many plot beats from the original movie). We went to the Academy of Sciences. We went to Rick and Ann's for brunch. I did not do much biking due to lack of bike, at least not until Wednesday when I took the new bike out to EndGame.

The Presents. Lots of fun stuff. Kimberly got me an entirely delightful Dalek mug. Also a biking shirt that I think will be really nice in summer. There were many games from Wiedlins, including some new Feld games and Broom Service. And some books. I used cash to pick up many things including the run of Y: The Last Man in nice hardcovers and the Lord of the Rings deckbuilders, and Wrath of the Righteous decks for Pathfinder ACG and biking lights and gloves.

So that was Christmas.

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Entries tagged with wiedlins

Thanksgiving in San Martin

Three Days of Christmas

In Which I Holiday

Back to the Bay, Part One

The Hague, Day -1: Biking in San Martin

The Hague, Day -2: Traveling to San Jose

Fraternity on Oahu

Return to California

In Which We Christmas in San Martin One Last TIme

In Which I Muse, Game, and Swim

In Which I Holiday

In Which They Got the Beat

In Which Mother's Day Comes Late to the East Bay

In Which I Have a Busy Weekend of Gaming, Visiting, Walking, and Studying

In Which We Celebrate Another Christmas Holiday

The New Year

What I Did on My Christmas Vacation, by Shannon A., Age Forty-Something

The Busy Thanksgiving Weekend

B-Days

Christmases