While this remains a travel blog, it often strays into personal experiences and recollections.
I tend to stay with the good times, because I believe words and thoughts have power. Never say or think anything you don't want to be true.
Nonetheless, sometimes sad events are unavoidable.
My long-time friend Pete passed away over the holidays. It wasn't totally unexpected. We all knew Pete's ongoing health issues could not be dodged indefinitely. Even when we last visited him to attend his Hippie Wedding in Washington, he talked of his days being numbered.
I will miss this man who stayed cheerful in the face of adversity and always had a joke to share over the course of the six decades that I knew him.
Transitioning from Thanksgiving, weather has continued to be unusually cold in Ardmore, but we did not hibernate completely.
We attended Emma's holiday ice skating show at the Philadelphia Skating Club and Humane Society rink, which was refurbished over the summer.
Emma skated gracefully and perfectly.
From the beginning number to Santa skating with the entire cast and crew, we enjoyed the fun-to-watch show.
We love it all: the Christmas music, holiday lights, diverse skating performance and that glorious feel of Christmas in the air.
I think the show gets better every year.
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| Sasha, Owen and Rory at hospital room in California. |
Between the first and second half of Beethoven's piece, the chorale and orchestra performed the World Premier of London 1666: The Great Fire.
The composer Alexander Campkin flew in from England to attend the performance. He shared a few introductory comments. He said he based the work on several surviving diaries of ordinary people who lived through a fire that destroyed London.
Campkin mentioned that one man, seeing his city in flames, did his best to save his most prized possession, a piece of cheese which he carefully wrapped and buried in hopes of saving it from the conflagration. It's a good reminder of how blessed we all are in our American age. It also brought to mind the devastating fires that caused so much destruction in southern California last January.
The original music was commissioned by Hugh Rosenbaum (Haverford College Class of 1960), who remains a tenor in the Haverford-Bryn Mawr Chorale. Good for him!
Julie and I enjoyed the concert. Musically, London 1666: The Great Fire seemed more musically aligned with seventeenth to nineteenth century music rather than more chaotic twentieth century modalities.
As with many classical pieces, it sometimes wove in well-known folk music of that time, acknowledged in Campkin's opening comments. While an interesting piece, Beethoven still won the day for Julie and me. Then again, Beethoven is stiff competition for a living artist.
As has become something of a Christmas tradition, Gina, Laszlo and Emma hosted a Hungarian stocking opening gathering in Merion Station. They had filled stockings with low-carb treats, laser pointers and other stocking stuffers.
Julie and I gave Emma an early Christmas gift of pajamas featuring ice-skating Snoopy on the pants, checking off one of the items on her Christmas list, though she didn't specify any particular type or graphics.
Julie and I spent an inordinate amount of time in Kohl's sorting through the possibilities for our petite granddaughter in what seemed to be a world of huge pajamas.
We also brought Gina, Laszlo and Emma a Charcuterie Chalet kit.
We've made gingerbread houses several times over the years.
They're always fun to make, despite crucial pieces of gingerbread inevitably snapping and needing to be glued together with the sugary icing.
When we went to their house a week later, we built the house. Because sausage and cheese are more perishable than gingerbread, we started eating it not long after completion.
By the way, soda crackers have much better structural integrity than gingerbread.
At our house, Gina, Julie and I got around to another holiday tradition for us, watching Love, Actually, eliciting the usual comments about what a good movie it is.
Yes, I suppose I should surrender my Man Card.
I said my sister would love this movie, so we decided to watch it in their home theater when we flew to sunny San Diego for the holidays. We did watch it, and she did love it. Darlene said she wanted to watch it with her friend of fifty years, Heidi.
Big Brooks joined us in the home theater to watch Home Alone the next evening. We all laughed at the total absurdity of the situation, recognizing that cell phones now make the premise obsolete.
Viewing Home Alone 2 the next night allowed us to see the famous Trump cameo that Disney flirted with deleting. To us, it was the highlight of the sequel, which is structurally almost identical to the original. For anyone who has never been to a Trump property, Trump Plaza where the scene was filmed is a hint of what the controversial West Wing Ballroom will be like upon completion.
By the way, if you feel sorry for Gina, Laszlo and Emma lingering in what has been a long, cold winter in the greater Philadelphia region. They would soon be flying off to Hawaii for the holidays!
This was also a vacation planned to celebrate their 20th Wedding Anniversary, which they officially celebrated a week earlier in Philly.
Gina and Laszlo fell in love in Hawaii during a Marine Biology Quarter when they studied Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA, which included scuba diving.
They enjoyed a fantastic, warm vacation, with Maui being the highlight.
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| To be clear, this is San Diego, not Hawaii. |
Amy and Lukas, incidentally, were in northern New York celebrating Christmas, New Year's Eve and the closing on their new house!
All is well in their lives, too, and they enjoyed their white Christmas and New Year with friends, including hiking around their expansive grounds.
Back to San Diego, Julie and I loved our stay with Darlene, Brooks and the younger Brooks, who I refer to as BG3 (or occasionally LB) in this blog for differentiation from his dad, who I sometimes call Big Brooks. BG3 once again picked us up at the airport when we arrived.
Another day, we rode over with Darlene and Brooks to Cabrillo Point to watch BG3 surf into a craggy cove on waves only accessible by boat.
The spot where the waves were breaking this day looked dangerous, and I wanted to yell, "Don't ride one of those waves like a surfing Evel Knievel just because we're here!"
BG3 made the most of the waves, pulling off in time to avoid being smashed into the crags or shoreline.
It was fun to watch.
I won't list delicious meals and walks along the waterfront specifically, but we enjoyed the experiences immensely.
As something special on this trip, Darlene and Brooks treated Julie and me, along with two other couples, to an Italian dinner with opera at Divo Diva, a Hillcrest coffee shop that becomes an evening Italian bistro a few times a month.
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| Darlene gave Julie a beautiful sweater to wear to the dinner show. |
The Diva, Victoria Robertson, is the soloist at the church Darlene and Brooks attend religiously (pun or whatever you want to call it, intended).
Her partner Rosario Monetti is the Divo. As you probably guessed, not only are the proprietors of this delightful eatery; they are fantastic opera singers.
The Diva and Divo performed some of the most famous opera solos, the kind you love even if you hate opera. For the season, they included some Christmas carols.
After a short break for dining and discussion, they handed out song lyric sheets so that we could have a rousing singalong for several Christmas songs. It was a magical evening.
In a very pleasant surprise, Jay and Owen drove down to San Diego on Sunday, arriving just after we attended church and had lunch at the Ketch.
As usual, Darlene and Brooks lavished presents on all of us, but Owen in particular.
He had lots of fun with the arcade-like claw machine, playing the music pad with drum sticks and other toys. They also gave him some clothes, including a sweatshirt that he would soon need.
BG3 offered to give Owen and Jay a ride on his boat, and of course they enthusiastically accepted.
Jay went over to the marine shop to get an Owen-sized lifejacket.
Julie and I joined the boat ride, although we would be pushing the weight limit with four adults plus Owen.
While it was fun for all of us, the big smile on Owen's face left no doubt that it was particularly special for him, having been deemed too small to go out on his last visit in the summer when his cousin Emma and I went on a ride with BG3.
Our lodgings at the Gateway Hotel served us well, including the complimentary continental breakfast. In this case continental means granola bars and cereal rather than Danish or something more continental. Importantly, they have coffee and bananas. I usually have raisin bran with strawberry yogurt while Julie has the same cereal with milk.
With the birth of a new baby, Jay decided it was simply practical to buy a coffee pot rather than relying on the slow, meticulous hand-poured drip system he formerly used. With the arrival of baby Rory, morning walks to Dogtown for Jay's morning cup and Owen's croissant is harder to manage on a daily basis.
However, we walked to the luxurious Fairmont Miramar Hotel one morning. Walking in the side doors, the smell of gingerbread immediately hit us.
Near the reception desk was a huge gingerbread house.
It was about the size of the playhouse our dad built for Darlene and me in our backyard in Westminster.
As something of gingerbread house builders ourselves, we were duly impressed by the scope of the project.
Sasha and Jay would be hosting a family brunch at their house on Christmas morning, so when the antique table passed down from Libby's mother showed significant cracking in the supporting legs on Christmas Eve, it could have easily been a panic situation.
Jay and Sasha are good craftspeople themselves, but better still, their neighbor Gene is a retiree who happens to have a workshop set up in his garage currently for refurbishing his kitchen cabinets.
We put the table on sawhorses, and Gene brought the legs to his garage workshop to make them stronger than ever. It would take 24 hours for glue to fully bond the wood. The table supported by only sawhorses was given careful treatment.
Sasha's sister Whitney and her husband Adam graciously hosted a family dinner that evening. They recently purchased a lovely, spacious condo on a tree-lined street in West Hollywood, basically finalizing their move from New York City.
Sasha's mother Libby furnished a prime rib, cooked to perfection by our gourmand hosts. There lots of great side dishes and fine wines, too.
Before dinner was served, we got to know Libby's brother Edward, who flew in from Paris where he lives to spend the holidays in California with his sister. He's an interesting gentleman who obviously knows far more about fine wines than I would ever hope to know. He gave tasting notes on bottles he opened.
It's always a pleasure to see Adam's parents Dan and Babs, who flew in from New York earlier that day. They were as excited to see their sweet granddaughter Mina again, just as we were to meet baby Rory and spend time with Owen again.
Owen, Rory and Mina all wore coordinated outfits with the same plaid fabric that Whitney bought for the occasion. Lots of photos were taken.
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| The beautiful baby faces are intentionally blurred for privacy. |
The next morning, Gene was still working on the legs. He came by just in time to get the legs back on for brunch.
Presents were opened, and some had also been opened the night before at the dinner party.
Owen had so many presents that I think it was a bit overwhelming for him, but in a good way.
That evening, Sasha, Jay, Owen, Rory, Julie and I headed over to Libby's house in Venice for a light dinner of hearty soup and bread. Her brother also attended Edward. We enjoyed getting to know him better. It was a pleasant end to a nice Christmas.
We would have one more group event with all of the family members at the famed King's Head Pub in Santa Monica, where we all enjoyed the English atmosphere on a rainy night. Faux snow fell from the eave outside of the pub.
Our time in Santa Monica was mostly focused on time playing with Owen and holding baby Rory.
Owen's language skills have progressed to expressing full sentences and clearly expressing what he means.
Rory is a sweet little guy who sleeps quite a bit and has a pleasant disposition when awakened. He only cries when he's hungry or needs a new diaper.
Jay drove to a hidden beach parking lot on a bluff.
We walked along a path to the beach, bringing to mind when we hiked along the Pembrokeshire Coast in Wales, albeit for a much shorter distance and cliffs not as high on this day as had been the case in Pembrokeshire.
Sturdy and strong Owen can now make the hike without being carried.
We walked down the coast past rocks to a sandy beach where we had fun playing keep away from JoJo and kicking the soccer ball.
The sand had a drop of about four feet between levels of beach, which Jay said wasn't like that last time they had been there.
We had a great time on our Santa Monica sojourn.
On New Year's Eve, we flew home. Coming from the West Coast, Julie had no trouble staying up past midnight, but I conked out at 11 PM for some reason. Julie came in to tell me when it was midnight.
"Happy New Year!"
It was freezing the first three days after we returned home, but then warmer weather moved in, making it more pleasant in the upper 40's and into the 50s. I even played my guitar on the backyard deck for the first time since October.
Julie and I celebrated our 40th Anniversary beside our fireplace, splitting a bottle of champagne and a pizza.
Back in our early days together in Seal Beach, I used to walk to Johnny's Pizza for a very inconsistent $5 pizza. Sometimes it was good, and sometimes we would joke that "Johnny must be on a bender." The most classic moment came when we walked over and found a handwritten sign on the locked door: "Pier Reopening Tonight. No Use to Open." It seemed very funny at the time.
Upon popping the cork on our champagne, we watched a great Justin Hayward concert on our big TV screen.
I say champagne, but it was actually Stefania Semi-Sweet Sparkling Wine from Ukraine. It tasted very much like a sparkling White Zinfandel, so we liked it. I think it would be too sweet for many.
It was a nice way to close out our season of celebrations, and lest I brush by it too quickly, forty wonderful years of shared experiences.
But wait....there's more. Amy drove down from Jersey City to join us for three days.
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| Three Nuts and a Squirrel |
Now that she has expanded her vegan diet to include eggs and fish (which we are quite happy about, because protein is extremely important for nutrition), it was fun fixing her a couple of meals.
She loves my Mom's recipe for tuna salad.
I had her try what I call the Frasier Crane special, Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs, although in this case the eggs were over-easy (two over-easy, while one self-determined to be over-medium, and who am I to argue with an egg?). Here's a photo of Amy, fresh out of the shower with wet air, enjoying breakfast.
Time for the next adventure!
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