Dreams, Moments, Travels
The girls dressed up for our dinner of Pani Puri, a definite favorite of all of ours. From the left of the photo is Savita, who came with her husband Harish; next is Renu, then Rinku, who came with her brother Krupesh. Srujana came with her husband Ashok, and on the right was Caroline. I made the Pani Puri as everyone agrees that I make it the best – thanks to Jay Patel.
Just finished watching Long Way Round with Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman; this was a really inspiring, wonderful documentary about the two guys motorcycling around the world. Caroline and I had caught part of an episode on Bravo during our Thanksgiving trip and had been looking forward to seeing the rest of the episodes, which we thought to be six. Well, the English broadcast was shown with seven episodes, and eMule helped us find and download them. Even at seven episodes, the wish for the show to go on and on couldn’t be more hoped for. It was even nicer watching the English broadcast as the rest of the world market must be considered a more mature audience because the raw language, the killing of a bear, and some parts with naked butts were all left in compared to the American bit we saw that has been sanitized. This is a show to watch again and again.
We visited Lee Lee’s Asian Market early in the day to pick up a lot of mint and cilantro for making Pani Puri tonight. Rinku, Krupesh, Ashok, Srujana, Harish, Savita, Raenu, Caroline, and I squeezed into our tiny living room with our makeshift blanket-on-floor-dining-room table and ate nearly 250 puri’s before going to P.F. Chang’s for dessert. We are planning to go bowling on Wednesday.
A stop at Denny’s to share a banana split.
Update: It’s September 28, 2018, and I have now published 1,930 blog entries since this banana split. This entry on January 1, 2005, represents my very first blog entry when I decided that instead of just doing a “POTD – Photo Of The Day” blog, I’d force myself to write a little something or other about what I was photographing. That didn’t always work out. At one point over the years, we even had a server crash that necessitated our pulling as many blog entries back from the mysterious world of various caches and archive services where we could find them; it was imperfect.
During this time, I found a passion for writing and only wish someone had somehow forced me to start blogging because, as Caroline and I have looked back over the years, we have discovered little treasures of memories that would have otherwise been easily lost to time. By the way, that very short sentence of 9 words about sharing the banana split was the best I could muster back on my first entry.
Update: All blog entries that show up here that are dated prior to this day were all added after 2005, such as the entry dated in 1963, shortly after my birth, which should raise a red flag considering the Internet didn’t send its first data until October 1969.
We closed out 2004 and welcomed in 2005 with some friends over dinner. From the left clockwise are Harish, Mandanna, Gautam, Shashi, Ashok, Caroline, Srujana, Rinku, and Savita. Although Jay, Raenu, and Krupesh couldn’t be with us, they were well thought of.
I thought nothing would ever change in this house Tata and Woody have lived in since they left Buffalo, New York, back in the late 1960s, but they redid the floor and had the walls painted.
Nothing else changed, not the stove, not the dishwasher, the countertops, or these old chairs my family played pinochle in while smoking up a storm. I think they all smoked back then.
In the 1970s, it was pretty frequent that family would all come up to Santa Barbara for weekends with the Burns. Tata and Woody would buy up a bunch of Tri-tips before anyone else really knew what that was, marinate it, and then grill it out back across from the jacuzzi. Back then, a jacuzzi was a luxury and seriously uncommon.
We, kids, could take their bikes out or head down to the nearby school that had public tennis courts or sit in the living room and watch their fancy TV that had a remote control.
Time for us to say goodbye as we pulled away with a car full of toilet paper, juice, soda, paper towels, dish soap, pens, and other stuff Tata pilfered from her job, and probably some cash she threw at us to cover gas. This was our first time spending Christmas with them, but it won’t be our last.
It’s been foggy/cloudy all day, so we didn’t spend too much time here at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
We did spend a good amount of time in Covina, stopping for dinner at my old favorite, Clearman’s North Woods Inn; I’ll never tire of their amazing salads. It was late before we ever pulled into our parking spot at home, but it was a great weekend and well worth the effort.
First up was church services on this early Christmas morning as the Burns are Catholic and still practice on occasion. Not only did Uncle Woody wear Christmas colors for the day, but Sophie went to church with us, kind of. She waited for us in the car.
Nope, we’re not at Jack-in-the-Box or at Cajun Kitchen; we’ve driven over to Santa Barbara proper, and if we are over the water, we’re not eating at the last remaining Sambo’s Restaurant either.
The pelican seems to mean business by glaring at us as if we could just pull a fish out of our pocket or something.
Breakfast was a special affair as we’d never eaten out here. We’re at Moby Dick Restaurant on Stearns Wharf. Not sure how many photos I have of Tata and me as she’s so reluctant to have her picture taken. I’d wager this is the one and only photo of her and me on Christmas day ever.
This giant fig tree in Santa Barbara has been here forever, or at least as long as I can remember, and in my memories as a child, it’s always been just this big. See human for scale.
Sophie, the German Shepherd; Caroline, the German Wife; and Uncle Woody – the invader of Germany on the beach in Santa Barbara.
A beautiful and memorable Christmas day in sunny California, in love and with family.