Week in Review – December 31st, 2023

“We all survived Christmas”

We ventured into the dangerous territory of Number Three Gypsy Hill on Christmas morning. The monsters were in pretty good form, and enjoyed their Pokemon gifts.

Francesca was excited about her unicorn sockies and the books signed by the Bush girls. I’m not sure Adamo was a huge fan of the books.

We didn’t stay too long and the crew needed to get packed up to head to their other Grammie’s house.

Back in the kitchen for Diana and Alicia. This time a ham and au gratin potatoes. Diana managed the timing of the ham with great results, and Alicia’s spuds were delicious. My contribution? Massive – I poured the glaze over and pinned the pineapple on as the ham went back in to finish. Here’s the group enjoying dinner:

The gift exchange was entertaining. Gianluca is getting concerned about his appearance and totally owned the “Bro Glo” self tanning cream that we selected from his list.

Giancarlo came with a number of books and artifacts to share. He said a little about each item, and then we each made a choice. Wasn’t sure where it was going at the start, but it worked out fine in the end.

And then things got really entertaining – Clorinda loves her silly animal toys that sing Christmas songs. So, Marco thought it was a good idea to get her and us both a new penguin that runs around the floor in circles and sings Jingle Bells.

It all started with the singing llama a few years back. It never ceases to get a big laugh from Clorinda. Here’s Marco doing the llama dance:

I found out earlier in the day that Marco and Julie’s little white dog, Yeti, was going to be staying at Clorinda’s home for several days under Alicia’s care. Clorinda has pretty strong feelings that a dogs place is outside, so I was interested to see how this would go. There was sufficient activity to distract her and, by the next morning, she seemed resigned to tolerating things.

Here’s a picture that Jude composed. I really like it.

I went on an excursion to Mavericks with Adamo and Luciano on Boxing Day afternoon. If you’re not familiar with Mavericks, it’s a surfing break near Half Moon Bay (about 10 mins from Pacifica.) It has some of the largest waves in the world and some very unique challenges. There’s a famous annual surfing competition about this time of year that draws thousands of spectators. You can’t really get a feel from the scale in this video, and there were about 30 crazy souls out there surfing. Very fun to watch.

The walk along the beaches to arrive at Mavericks was a lot of fun. Adamo and Luciano insisted on paddling around in the gooey sand.

I forgot to mention that, prior to the expedition, I helped Francesca give the kitties a bath. Hilarious.

Will, Christine, and Ollie came for dinner on Boxing Day evening. Grammie was certainly a bit concerned when Ollie and Yeti started rough-housing around. The Indian food, and ceviche that they brought from Redwood City, were all excellent. A real feast.

After dinner we did a small gift exchange. Last year, or the year before, we gave Campbell a Mardi Gras cushion that had sequins on one side. Clorinda was very entertained pushing the sequins one way and the other to make patterns. So…Will and Christine were very excited to gift her one of their well traveled pillows with the same feature. Apparently this has been to Burning Man and several other crazy festivals. Clorinda was initially quite excited with all the coloured tissue paper and then loved the pillow.

A hilarious game of throwing the pillow at Keith, getting wadded up tissue paper back, telling Diana to tickle Keith’s bare feet and such ensued. It brought poor Diana to tears.

Our flight home to New Orleans on Wednesday morning was delayed a couple of hours due to crew on a delayed flight. The airport was very busy, but we made the best of it and made it home smoothly.

Now it was time to start preparing for hosting the Krewe on New Year’s Eve. I took another stab at trying to get the ice dispenser to work. All the parts fell out and I had to guess how to reassemble. I have an exploded view now, so will be able to fix it in no time. Suffice to say – no ice dispensed via the door at the party.

We spent some happy time cleaning the wood floors and all the bathrooms, and then decided to “work together” on assembling a folding table for the food. You can see here what happens when the table isn’t locked in the middle before we try to stretch the cocktail skirt around it. What a pair!

Fortunately, Diana’s work on the dining table was much smoother.

Denny brought over a keg for the kegerator outside. He was not impressed with the new Cowboys tap that I got as a Christmas gift from Will.

Now it was time for me to go and pick up the catered food in Old Metairie. I thought I’d walk around the corner to Gracious bakery before making the drive. Is that a brass band I hear in somebody’s front yard?

Sure enough, somebody had hired a decent sized band to kick off New Year’s Eve. I wasn’t able to navigate past the crowd to pick up baguettes, and so opted to drive to the catering place and do that later.

The Italian shop was classic old school. Very friendly and helpful folks, with what appeared to be an excellent sandwich counter. The lady kindly helped me carry the trays out to the car. All of the food was excellent and well received by the Krewe.

I watched some of the Sugar Bowl parade in the afternoon and was amazed that those guys were brave enough to march Bevo, the longhorn mascot, through such large and boisterous crowds. He didn’t seem phased at all.

Folks started arriving around 7pm. The kids dropped off their parents and stayed for a short while. Here’s a glimpse into the hubbub:

And here’s a collection of pictures from the rest of the evening. We think our first party in the new home was a success. Happy New Year to all of you!

I’m still working through “Wellness” – it is a 650 page tome. The writing and story are very good so far – particularly a section on how Facebook algorithms really work. I’ll have much more to say next week – when we don’t have any big events happening. Time to rest up for Mardi Gras.