Steph and I cooked a beet salad for the welcome dinner and it was tasty. We were joined by Candice, David, Tina, Kevin, and Amit joined a little later. It was a great dinner and a good conversation. We played a game of Betrayal with Amit being the traitor as the Demon Lord. I had a good chance of finishing it quickly, but that didn’t come through. It was enjoyable for me, but the others didn’t seem to as much.
Steph and I spent New Years at Nick’s place in SF and we played a game of Betrayal at House on the Hill. I got a pretty simple game, but it was difficult for me based on all the character sanities being really high. Luckily for me since all of them had really low might they couldn’t complete their goals anyway. My character went away which was fine since she had gotten beaten up pretty badly. We then played a few rounds of Hanabi and didn’t do too well.
We then got a Lyft to the restaurant for dinner, and they put us in the back room. We got a ton of food and the duck was delicious. I really enjoyed the conversation and it was a lot of great food.
We decided to stay in on new years and had a few of Steph’s roommates join us. Tina and Amit were around and they joined us in a game of Tokaido. I had gotten Tokaido for Steph and she got second in the game we played. Tina won by a good bit, and Amit got a close third to Steph. I got a far last. After that we sat down for a good game of Dungeon of the Endless and watched When Harry Met Sally.
Steph and I went to Shiok with Amanath, Rish, Tommy, Sara, and Max. Max just did dinner, and the rest of us went to see the last Hobbit movie. It was terrible. The movie had so many boss fights that it was more or less one boss fight after the other, and each one was absurd in how it played out. The eagles coming at the end, while actually part of the book, really made it seem that much more absurd. The one guy I wanted to see fight, beorn, didn’t really get anything more than a quick scene. We were amused by the mounts that showed up in the last battle; the elk, pig, and rams. The rams were especially amusing since they came out of nowhere.
We went to Brian’s place for his housewarming. He is living in the house in front of Beachhead now. We had a great time starting out with great food, and we had 9 people there total. After eating we did the gift exchange and I got a cocktail creation book, Steph got a dragon door knocker, and Alex TD got the 3Doodler we brought. He spent the next hour trying to figure out how to use it. It is a lot harder to use at first than expected.
Steph and I joined Lindsay, Kevin, and Debby at You Jam! It was a lot of fun, and I got a decent workout from it. We did a lot of dancing, then we decided to go to lunch at a place nearby Kevin’s house. It was Malaysian food and was pretty tasty. We of course got Thai ice tea, young coconuts, and the roti with the peanut sauce. It was all tasty, and they had particularly good tofu.
Steph and I slept in Christmas day and when we got up cooked a large amount of Tom Yom. It was a particularly tasty batch, and we took that over to her uncle’s house for Christmas Lunch. It was a decent group of about 12 people. I enjoyed showing off our trip videos to Jeff and Patty. We chatted about the Paint Nite gift I got for Steph and they really loved the idea. They have been going hiking lately and taking along RC trucks to go through and off the trails. The RC they got are pretty serious vehicles. I would love to go with them and do that, but I’d probably take a quadcopter. Shortly after that the babies got active, and Steph and I checked out a bit. We went back to Beachhead and hung out there the rest of the day watching documentaries and playing Dungeon of the Endless.
Steph and I went to dinner with her parents on Christmas Eve at China Village, a decent dim sum place. We had a few of the dim sum dishes, including my favorite Shanghai dumplings, as well as a few of their lager dishes. It was all delicious and I enjoyed spending the time with her parents. We then went back to their place and opened presents. Most of my presents this year were actually for my kitties, which is nice since I didn’t want any more stuff. Steph and I even did a big house cleaning where I got rid of a car load of things that had been accumulating. I was glad to be much more clutter free.
Steph and I went to Karaoke with Leyan, Kevin, Lindsay, Andrew, and Debby. We had a great time, and got to sing all the songs we wanted. There were a lot of Christmas classics going around. I really enjoyed singing “Chestnuts Roasting” as well as “Baby, it’s Cold Outside.” The “Baby, it’s Cold Outside” song is so creepy, but I really love the way the harmony and counterpoint in the duet, despite the words to the song. Steph got really into a few of the songs, and I thought it was adorable. I did a few of my classic karaoke songs like one of LMFAO’s, one from Billy Joel, and American Pie. Lindsay brought an interesting drink that was purple with sparkles and it had a decent amount of alcohol in it. It wasn’t all that tasty but it still hit the spot. I had a really good time and would love to do it again.
It's an Exciting World 