daily slice-of-life photo blog of a Gen-X dad
こんばんは！How’s it going?
My mom makes some amazing Jamaican food (she grew up in Port Antonio, Jamaica) and over the holidays, she always prepares a huge Jamaican feast. The Jamaican dinner will be for Christmas eve, but today we had a Jamaican breakfast, which consisted of ackee and saltfish and hard dough bread. It’s a super-special treat to eat this yummy food!
I hope you had a nice day!
おやすみなさい！
– B 
こんばんは！How’s it going?
Tonight’s photo is of a tradition we have had in our family since we were kids – Mahjong. The tradition started probably back in the early 80s when my grandparents would visit us over the Christmas and summer holidays, and we learned how to play the game. We’d often play late into the night and had such a great time!
These days, my kids and their cousins are all joining in on the tradition and it is a ton of fun. I have to admit that the game is a lot slower because the kids pair up and so there is a lot of deliberation and discussion before each play so each game takes a while to play and we don’t get to play as many before it gets late.
As I may have mentioned before, our family plays the game with some strange rules, probably to make it easier to learn for us when we were kids, so if I ever play Mahjong with other people, I have to adjust a bit. And our family uses poker chips to keep score, which of course is not normal. I’d love to learn how to play with traditional counters someday.
I hope you had a great day!
おやすみなさい！
– B
こんばんは！How’s it going
Today’s photo is of the kitchen area of my parents’ house. It’s looked pretty much the same since I was a kid which I am happy for. Sure, there have been changes throughout the years such as a new stove, painted walls, and most recently a new floor, but it still has the original feeling. I was thinking how sad it would be if the kitchen got a total remodel… so much would be lost and swept into family history. Makes me sad to think of it!
For now, I’m happy to be able to come back to my childhood home, with the original charm still intact.
I hope you had a great day!
おやすみなさい！
– B
こんばんは！How’s it going?
Today we traveled from coooold Texas to a slightly warmer Southern California to spend the holidays at my folks’ house. The flight was delayed by about a half an hour, but other than that went smoothly. If you travel between Austin and Los Angeles, I highly recommend flying JetBlue from Long Beach. You can avoid the madhouse that is LAX, and if you are on the south side of town, you can avoid a bit of traffic too! Plus JetBlue is a great airline, with lots of freebies such as free movies, free WiFi, snacks, and soft drinks.
When we spend Christmas in Los Angeles, we ship most of our gifts directly to my parents’ house so we have a pile of boxes waiting for us. Today we’ll go through them, wrap them up, and then have some free time. In fact, we don’t have much on the schedule this time. It’s nice to just play it by ear!
Hope you had a great day!
おやすみなさい！
– B
