Monday and Tuesday were quiet, work from home days. It was nice to be back in the routine of working from home with Diana, if only for a couple of days. Travel to San Francisco on Wednesday was pretty quiet and painless and we arrived in time to meet up with Will and Christine for dinner at Sushi Plus in Redwood City (where Will’s new apartment is located). Will was able to give us a ride in the new BMW M240, but not the full experience since it had rained most of the day. It was entertaining to have the live run down of all the special features that he had customized on his factory order.
Will took care of most of the ordering at Sushi Plus. The “fire roll” and “super duper roll” were very good and unique. Clorinda enjoyed her left overs of “super duper roll” very much.
Christine has just started a new job and was clearly very pleased and excited about it. Will told us a fun story of how Christine started working in the technology field – she was running the jewelry department at Nordstrom and one of her customers liked her service so much that she told her son (owner of a technology startup) that he needed to hire the lady who helped her from Nordstrom to interact with his customers.
Adamo and Amy hosted Thanksgiving at their home. We had a group of 13 and so it was good that they had just bought a big new table. As usual, Amy, Adamo, Diana, and Clorinda created a delicious feast. My favorite was the “French Onion Soup stuffed mushrooms”.
The little monsters above (my nephews, Luciano and Massimo) did their best to disrupt my quiet afternoon of football viewing before the meal. The Cowboys pulled out a nice win over the division rival Redskins and I was able to watch some of it. I like this picture of Clorinda making a key point with her neighbor Andy as he’s cooking up something for the feast.
On Friday we were lucky to have an early dinner with all three boys at Vino Santo in Redwood City – Will’s favourite Italian restaurant. The food and service were both excellent. We started with an off-the-menu appetizer sampler that Will apparently orders on each visit, then shared lobster ravioli and some delicious scallops. By this time we were starting to get full and hadn’t ordered main courses yet. Diana had a calamari steak and I had a beet salad. Will, on the other hand, had plenty of room for a full size ribeye steak. Clorinda enjoyed left over calamari later in the evening. Dinner was really good and we had a very nice conversation with the boys. Here’s a picture with Finn from the evening and one of all three from Thanksgiving day.
Saturday was an early start to the airport to fly home. The airport was much busier than on Wednesday with lots of families flying. We had a concert at the Kessler on Saturday night and so drove from the airport to a downtown hotel and then headed to the Bishop Arts district in Oak Cliff for a pre-concert ramble. This is a picture of the Mobil pegasus outside the hotel (the pegasus atop the Mobil Oil building was a stalwart of the Dallas skyline for many years).
I enjoyed the movie “Pick of the Litter” on the flight. This follows a litter of five puppies born at the Guide Dogs for the Blind facility as they progress through training and assignment to owners. Only two of the five were placed as guide dogs with one retained as a breeder, one assigned as a PTSD support dog, and one finishing as a pet. The training to have the dogs learn to ignore owners’ commands when they would put them at risk was fascinating – to be able to teach a dog to decide that traffic is unsafe and to not proceed across a street even though given the command is amazing. I highly recommend this film.
Our Oak Cliff evening began at Macellaio – a new restaurant by the couple 
behind the fabulous Lucia Italian restaurant. We enjoyed an amazing chicken liver mousse and delicious cocktails. After that Diana’s new boots were given a good comfort test as we walked 1.1 miles to Nova for dinner. They passed with flying colours.
We met Diana’s co-worker, Janelle, and her husband at the Kessler to see the Band of Heathens. I think this is a band we’ve seen more than any other – the first time was when we took a trip to Austin several years ago. The opening act was “Matt the Electrician”, also from Austin. He originally worked as an electrician all day, rewiring houses and playing concerts in the evening. We loved his voice, songs and between song banter.
The Band of Heathens put on an excellent show – the first half was a selection of their popular songs and the second a full performance of their latest album, “A Message from the People Revisited”. This was a Ray Charles album from the 1970s that speaks to many of the social issues that are still relevant today. We had a table in the front row and it was funny to watch McD “swooning” over the two lead singers.
Here’s a video of “Abraham, Martin and John”, my favourite from that album.
And here’s the encore performance of “Hurricane”:
Another in a long list of great concert experiences at the wonderful Kessler theater! Here’s the full set list, courtesy of the swooner:
On Sunday morning, we took advantage of being downtown to visit Smoke for breakfast. I enjoyed my usual pulled pork benedict and Diana ordered a bacon burger so that we’d have leftovers for dinner. Breakfast reminded me of some pictures Finn sent this week of his latest breakfast creations.
We (ok, mostly Diana) put up a small Christmas tree on Sunday afternoon. 
Much smaller than usual since we’ll be gone over the holiday and couldn’t face hauling the regular tree down from the attic. I always get a kick out of how much Diana enjoys unwrapping and placing the ornaments on the tree. That’s the famous angel that Adamo and Amy repaired last year on top.
Two great new albums were released this week by Roseanne Cash and Mark Knopfler (I read this week that he was born in Glasgow). Here are tracks from each and a closer from Matt the Electrician.