daily slice-of-life photo blog of a Gen-X dad
When I visit my family in Torrance, we usually play a lot of mahjong and this visit was no different. My brother killed us one night with a limit hand right off the bat. It was tragic… But still a lot of fun.
Four of us visited Santa Anita Racetrack for the opening day of the season. It was so fun! My sons have never been to the horse races, and it has been eons since I went so it was like a new, fresh experience. It was a perfect afternoon out, with mild temperatures and beautiful mountains in the background. And everyone (except me) won a little!
Carrying on our Christmas tradition, bagels were enjoyed with all the fixings. This year, my son brought a bunch of bagels from New York City. They were yummy!!
This is one tradition that I’m sure we’ll continue on even if we’re not all together. It’s kind of sad to think we won’t always have all of us in the same room, so let’s enjoy while we can.
Our Christmas Eve dinner was a Jamaican feast prepared by my mom. It was out-of-this-world! The star of the show (for me at least) is the crab rundown. The rundown sauce is so good. I could eat the sauce over rice all day long!
In addition to the crab, we had callaloo, rice & peas, stew peas, curry goat, oxtail, jerk chicken and pork, ackee & saltfish, escovich fish, and fricassee chicken. Needless to say, we were all stuffed. 😆
I went for a long run today around my hometown to see some nostalgic sights, including my old high school. It still looks the same as when I went there 40 years ago, but there are more fences and locks for security, and a new softball field. But I did the loop around the campus, which is one of the runs we used to do when training for cross-country. It was a lot more fun this time around! (I didn’t enjoy running when I was in high school )
I also found a few cool leaves. I’ll use them as bookmarks.
It was a good dinner!
On our flight, we got priority seating and also sat in the row that had free drinks, alcohol included! I still don’t know how it works other than it’s one of the perks that Mariko has due to her status on American Airlines. I enjoyed the extra room and we shared a beer, which made the flight a bit nicer! One downside was that we were just behind first class, so I could see and smell the dinner that they were enjoying… it made me so hungry!
