Christmas Celebrations

We had a lovely Christmas here in California. We made a feast (click for pictures) fit for kings (or at least 10 other people!) on Christmas Eve. I think we'll be eating leftovers for the next week, which is fine by me. We then headed to midnight mass at a beautiful cathedral in Oakland. It had really interesting modern architecture and was well-attended for a service starting at 12am! We were also impressed by the tiny but mighty choir.

Since we were up so late the night before, we slept in on Christmas. We did all the "normal" Christmassy things - ate a nice breakfast, opened a few presents, and watched "A Christmas Story." We headed to Amy's aunt and uncle's house around 6 and had a very festive Indian Christmas party complete with a White Elephant gift exchange that left us with some tasty looking Ghirardelli chocolates after we had stolen from us a Safeway gift card, a corkscrew set, and an Olive Garden gift card. Quite the whirlwind :) We ate delicious Indian food and enjoyed hanging out with all the babies that attended. It was good to borrow a family for the holiday since ours was far away.

Now, we're sitting at home waiting again for our cable guy to move our cable connection. Again. The Comcast saga continues...

We hope you all had a lovely Christmas celebration!

Christmas in California

I have been more than a little lazy about updating my blog even though I promised that I would try to do better. Maybe it's because all of my posts would be about studying and more studying which just isn't that interesting. But, since it's been a while, I guess that we've accumulated some news.

I've now finished my first semester of law school. I'm pretty excited to be on break even if I still have a bit of assigned reading to do. It was a very busy semester, and there was definitely a learning curve. But now that I know what to expect, I think the next semester will be a little less stressful. I'm looking forward to my next set of classes, as well. Dave keeps asking me about criminal cases we see on the news or on TV, and I have to tell him to wait until I've taken criminal law next semester! I'm also taking a mental health legislation drafting class that looked interesting. Otherwise, just the usual stuff (Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, etc.).

Dave is still looking hard for a job, but he has an upcoming interview, and we're keeping our fingers crossed. The tech job market is even more difficult that we could have imagined here. So competitive! He often has day-long technical interviews even for seemingly menial jobs! But, in his free time he's taken over lot's of the household chores and has been learning new programming languages that might help him with his next set of interviews. So, he's still keeping himself busy!

As for Christmas, we are staying here in California for our celebrations. We've decorated our tiny tree for our tiny apartment and have been getting in the Christmas mood by baking (and eating) more than we should and listening to Christmas music. Yesterday, we went to Union Square in San Francisco with some friends to see the Christmas tree and the decorated shop windows. We also had tea at a nice little tea shop near there where we sat and talked for hours. It was so nice to hang out with my usual study buddies in a non-studying way! Tonight, we're headed to Alameda (a town about 15 minutes from here) to see "Christmas Tree Lane," a street that supposedly has amazing Christmas lights.

On Christmas evening, we're headed to a friend's house for a Christmas party with her family. We've also got a friend of mine from high school coming for a visit over New Year's weekend, and my parents are coming for a visit on January 5th. So, we're enjoying the holidays and the fun company they bring!