What are Traditions: Christmas 2017

Why post a portrait when you already got everyone’s best sides?

After just a few hours of sleep, I managed to get up early enough for Summer to come over and watch my Christmas movie, Gremlins with me. When lunch was ready, she left and I headed to my parents’ house to meet up with family.

Julie wanted to take us all to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi in the evening, so I invited everyone over to watch The Force Awakens to refresh ourselves on the new storyline. Julie and Andy left almost immediately because my cats tried to murder her immune system, but my parents and I finished the movie.

I killed the rest of the evening time waiting to go to the movie, then met everyone at the theater. I thought the movie was pretty entertaining, but the plot did feel a bit contrived. Overall, I guess it did its job of passing the baton. Someone in charge definitely made an attempt to follow the recent trend of making serious movies funnier. It didn’t completely fit with tradition, but it got some cheap laughs.

It’s all a machine, partner. Live free: don’t join.

What are Traditions: Magic Club Potluck 2017

I got up this morning after a late night of sneaky Photoshopping to the blog with plenty of time to get ready to leave for the Magic Club Christmas meeting. It’s late enough in the year now that I think we can accept a little bit of festivity.

We were pretty late leaving my parents’ house, because why wouldn’t we be? I brought my HTC 10 along for the ride to try and compare service. Overall it seemed about the same, but I didn’t spend all day with my face in my phones either. Surprisingly my data at the Riverfront Park was actually a bit faster on straight Sprint. I probably should have gotten an app to monitor what towers I was hitting before we left.

I felt a little removed for most of the meeting. It’s grown quite a lot over the years. This year they had a string quartet while we ate. There were enough other people there for setup and teardown that I didn’t really do anything. The show was almost entirely for the kids, and I don’t think anybody really talked to me at all except to say hello.

We hit up some Oriental grocery stores on the way out of town, and I picked up some shrimp and cuttlefish chips and some dried squid. My snack game has been off lately, which I suppose is good. Once home, I did a load of laundry to cap the weekend.

Please enjoy this “tastiness.”

What are Traditions: Thanksgiving 2017

I woke up super late today with a massive headache after a long night. I didn’t actually get out of bed until the afternoon. I wasn’t really clear on what day the family would be cooking for Thanksgiving, so when Mom texted that food was ready, I still had to get out of bed and shower.

I guess Julie’s still in Florida, so it was just us with Bác Vân and Doug, and Dad invited a college friend. I showed up just as everyone else was finishing up their food, then left after all the guests were gone.

I guess I’m doing some things tomorrow, so I can forgive today being worthless.

Even though I really should, I knew that I never would.

Keystone of Justice

I slept beautifully last night after running on little sleep for the past couple days worth of conferences. It was all downhill from there.

I received a juror qualification questionnaire in the mail. This never would have happened had I not registered to vote after this past election. If I’m honest with myself, I still probably won’t even exercise that right if the time comes. I sort of assume North Korea will assimilate us before that happens. People seem to forget that Samsung is a Korean company. They think North Korea won’t stand a chance against us, when half the population carries a Samsung mobile phone with all of their personal information and an always-listening microphone. They never saw that one coming.

My Uncle Giao and Aunt Teresa came to town and wanted to visit. Their timing didn’t work out for lunch, so they wanted me to meet them at my parents’ house for dinner. I played a few rounds of Overwatch while I waited.

It was too cloudy to catch the Orionids, because why wouldn’t it be?

Maybe tomorrow will go according to plan.