December doings

I begin the blog again with yet another apology for absence – a whole month without an update!

Just before December, we had Thanksgiving. We went around to a friend’s parents’ in Alameda across the Bay for a slap-up turkey dinner, which was lovely. Two days later, we went to one of my colleagues’ apartment for another delicious turkey dinner, followed by homemade pumpkin and raspberry pies. The next day, we went for a long hike along the coast in Marin to walk it off.

December has seen plenty of rain, but we have made it out for another couple of hikes. One was on Mount Tam with a friend of mine, her pug and her friend’s two Labradors. The pug sat on my knee on the way there and back in the car, and I almost got licked to death!

We’ve also had many Christmas parties. Jon’s office party was in the Rockridge area of Oakland, in a small restaurant that we completely took over. A week later was my office party, which was in a tapas restaurant in the Mission district of San Francisco. We also had a party at Jon’s colleague’s place in Castro Valley – they had a portable fire pit, which was a great addition. I’ve made a mental note to get one of those one day for my garden back in England.

For Christmas, we did a big dinner again – this time for 11 people. We ordered a super expensive free range organic turkey from the butcher’s in the Ferry Building, and cooked that with all the usual goodies. I also made my own Christmas puddings, which I must say were excellent, all modesty aside! We set fire to them with some rum. Jon made mince pies, which were likewise superb. To keep up the traditions, we watched the Queen’s speech, had crackers and listened to carols. Afterwards, we played White Elephant, which is kind of like Secret Santa, but allows you to “steal” gifts from other players. It was hilarious – Jon got a “Studs & Spurs Calendar”, which, fortunately for him, was stolen shortly afterwards.

I was back at work on Boxing Day, because it’s not a holiday here, but things were pretty quiet. We then went skiing at the weekend, driving up to Tahoe on the Saturday morning, and getting there in time for a half day’s skiing, which is a bit cheaper than a full day. Driving up in the morning rather than on Friday night proved to be a good idea, since we had our best journey ever at 3 hours 20 minutes. The roads were fine, in spite of the fact that there had been a lot of snow, but it was a little dicey in South Lake Tahoe itself, with plenty of near-frozen slush around, which caused us to skid a little a couple of times. We had a great time skiing – conditions were excellent, and surprisingly, it wasn’t too busy. We stuck to skiing on the California side on the Saturday, moving over to Nevada on the Sunday (the ski area straddles both states). It was clear and sunny, so there were good views over vast Lake Tahoe.

That night, we stayed in a casino-hotel just across the stateline, because that turned out to be the best value (casinos get plenty of revenue from gambling, so can afford to offer cheaper rooms) on a weekend that was very expensive accommodation-wise. We were starving after the skiing, so went out to the Montbleu casino for their all-you-can-eat buffet, which was very good. We then had a long sleep before embarking on another great day’s skiing, taking in one of my favourite runs a couple of times: the Olympic Downhill followed by the Stagecoach run, which takes you right down to the bottom on the Nevada side. I fell over a few times, but didn’t hurt myself. We were lucky that the journey back to San Francisco was snow-free, since snow had been forecast.

Of course, I shouldn’t have been skiing at all, because I’m five months pregnant! Another thing we found out this month, when I went for my ultrasound at 19 weeks, was that it’s a girl. We now need to get working on some names!

After a fairly quiet and unproductive New Year’s Day, we geared ourselves up for our visit back to the UK and braced ourselves for the 10-hour flight. We’ve now made it over and begun our rounds of visits.