Christmas wrap-up

I had a nice Christmas weekend with family. On Friday night, a bunch of us went to a new-ish Filipino restaurant in San Bruno called Tribu. It’s got a hip vibe that you don’t see in many Filipino restaurants here. The food I had was all right; I stuck to mostly familiar dishes (like pancit bihon and kare-kare), so on the one hand there wasn’t a feeling of culinary adventure (though I did appreciate the calamansi slush). Sometime I want to go back and try some less familiar items. On Saturday we went to the Tanforan mall; at Target we bought a car seat for my cousin whose baby is due next month, and at Old Navy I got a couple of long-sleeved shirts and a zip-up sweater (with elbow patches!).

The next day, Christmas Eve, my mom and I drove to see my aunt’s family in Concord. We attended Mass in the afternoon, and in the evening we visited other relatives and friends, and ate a lot. Oh, there was so much food at each house. Christmas morning was a frenzy of opening presents, and in the afternoon, we went to San Francisco to skate at the Yerba Buena Ice Skating Center. I hadn’t been ice skating in at least a few years, so I was holding onto the rail for the first few laps around the rink, but after a while I got the hang of it again, more or less. (See photo, above, of me not so much skating as standing still: an achievement nonetheless. I believe I’m mouthing the words, “Take the #@*% picture already!”)

On Tuesday, my mom and I watched Funny Girl on DVD (watching a Barbra Streisand musical with my mother: I believe my gay membership card has just been renewed for several years), and that night Thom came back from a week in Virginia visiting his folks. Before I went to pick him up at the airport, I went to the mall and got my hair cut, which I thought would be a cute surprise for Thom. (It was a pretty dramatic change, since hadn’t gotten my hair cut in several months and have had it in a ponytail until now.) Little did I know the stylist would take forever! I raced from the salon to home to the airport, and thankfully made it in plenty of time. He likes my hair, though he says it makes me look about sixteen. Ha. In the photo above I’m wearing one of my new Old Navy shirts. It says, “Going down since 76.” Of course I had to get it. Oh, wait, it’s about snowboarding?