In the morning we went to see Steph’s Cousin and had lunch at a cute place that had good food. They caught up on all sorts of stuff, and I chimed in a bit. We then met up with everyone else where we found out that the flight had been delayed 3 hours. I was ready to get there, but we stopped of for some food first at a cheese steak place. The cheese steaks were delicious and we then went to wait at the terminal. The flight continued to get delayed, and a flight to SFO that was originally scheduled after us left. We shortly thereafter got the news that our flight had been cancelled. This was very annoying since, had we chosen to drive, we would have just been arriving back in SF. Amit and Steph were nice enough to drive us back, and I tried to get as much sleep as possible, but the car wasn’t particularly comfortable for it.
Steph, Tina, Ilia, Amit, and I went to San Diego for Jimmy’s wedding. The alarm I set was also set for weekdays only so it didn’t go off when we needed it to. We got a call from Tina and had to rush over to get there. On the drive to the airport it got super foggy and we realized that there would likely be delays anyway so there wasn’t as much of a rush. Sure enough when we got there they had delayed the flight because “Well, look out the window.” Tina was amazing and brought some Izzy’s bagels for everyone. They were as usual very tasty. I’m been resisting the urge to go over and get a half dozen, since Izzy’s is only a half block from my place. We got in and went to get the rental car, with Steph doing the 1.5 hour drive to the hotel. We stopped off for some lunch on the way at a place that did potato and fried chicken burritos. They were very different from any burritos I’d had before. I would more call them wraps than burritos since there wasn’t much in the way of rice or beans in the one I had. It was still very tasty with the potatoes as hash browns. I grabbed some cards at the cvs, which was good since the rooms at the hotel weren’t ready for us when we got there. We spent about an hour playing some open faced Chinese poker. I ended up a good bit, and had some good probabilities of monster hands that didn’t work out in the last couple hands.
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I got up crazy early to make it to my flight; 5am in Atlanta = 2am in San Francisco. When I got to the airport, instead of sleeping I got a good bit of work done. I worked most of the flight as well. When I got into SFO I was a little out of it and got on the tram before going to pick up my bag at baggage claim. I went back to get it and was just in time for the Caltrain after making the connection through the SFO tram to BART to Caltrain. I had forgotten that they would be on the holiday schedule, which turned out really well for me since I would have missed the train otherwise. Steph picked me up at the Palo Alto station and we went back to my place to say hi to the kitties. We then went over to her place to meet up with a group of people for a hangover brunch.
One of the things I helped my dad with was getting his Corvette smog tested. There were all sorts of issues that we had to overcome. First was the driveway. There was a large angle at the top of the driveway that made the bottom of the Corvette scrape pretty badly. We got 2×6’s so that we could put them under the tires as it went over that little bump. When we first went to get it out the battery was dead. That meant that the data on the computer wasn’t there for the smog test, and we had to reset the computer. To do the reset, Jeff and I took the Corvette out for about a 60 mile drive. He had to go through a full routine of acceleration, deceleration, and restarting the car. It took a couple of hours and Jeff had lots of fun with it.
Jeff and Leslie came over around 11:15 Christmas morning and we started opening presents. There were lots of great presents to go around, and I got some really nice ones. Jeff game me a really nice messenger bag that has a battery in it for charging devices. I got lots of the things I had asked for as well. Kim got me a really nice fedora. Mom and dad got me some books, socks, gloves, shoes, and other useful things. We had a big dinner and the food was delicious. Like any good holiday dinner there was way too much food and a good bit of leftovers for eating over the following days. We played some Cards Against Humanity, since I had gotten the rest of the set for Jeff. As expected Dad really liked the game, and Mom was appalled at some of the answers. Mom still liked it more than expected. After that, Jeff and Leslie left. I then got my parents and Kim to play some of the games I had made. They had some good feedback.
I got to Atlanta and got to see my parents new house and it is pretty big. I’m helping them fix it up the way they like and that has meant three main things so far; moving things around, investigating the vacuum system, and putting the workout mats in their workout room. I’ve seen both my brother and sister; and cooked tom yom for the whole family plus Lesley. They really liked it and Kim asked for the recipe. I’ve been able to get some work done, but not nearly as much as I was hoping. I’m enjoying the time with the family, but missing Steph.
The morning of flying to Atlanta I took a little bit too long to pack, which meant I saw the train pull away from the station as I walked up the ramp. Luckily Stephanie was a lovely selfless person, and she picked me up and took me to the airport. I certainly owe her one for that, and should pack earlier in the future. Once at the airport I had a quick lunch and went through security. The flight was uneventful, and I got a lot of good book listening in. I like that there is no requirement to shut off devices anymore. I picked my checked bag up and hopped on Marta. At Lindbergh station Mom and Dad came to get me, and they took me to their new house. It is very nice, and quite big for the two of them. It isn’t as big as the previous house, but it is still quite large. There are some nice touches to the new house; lots of stained and cut glass, big windows everywhere, a nature preserve behind the house, a sauna in the basement, three large porches. I got a good bit to eat, and it was delicious. There is something special about my Mom’s cooking, where you can taste an extra flavor of love that she puts into everything. I stayed up a bit, but got up decently early. I’ll have to see if I can make it to the evening or if I need a nap due to the jet lag.
We did 2 days of paragliding. It was tons of fun. I got the fewest flights with around 20, with Steph getting the most around 25. It was all amazing, and I would love to learn more paragliding and get into longer flights. The flights at the training hill lasted about 45 seconds, but were still really fun. We got some red tailed hawks flying with us, and they were only a few tens of feet flying off my wing tips. There was a van picking us up at the bottom and driving us back up to the top. The turn around was very quick and the number of flights we got were impressive. We also had the perfect weather and wind for most of the weekend. Towards the ends of the days on Saturday and Sunday we got cross winds, and that made it harder to launch.
We went to a little town near Santa Barbara called Solvang. It is made to look like a Danish village. The place was amazingly cute. We wandered around trying to find a place to eat. Many of the places we tried to eat were full, but we found a nice place on the outside of town. It was very tasty, and the seating was surprisingly relaxing. After dinner we went to a nearby campsite. We didn’t get to have a fire since there was a fire advisory. The night ended up being really cold, but we stilled played some games on Brian’s iPad. The night didn’t go well, but we managed to stay warm enough.
It's an Exciting World 