Thanksgiving break report

It's hard to believe Thanksgiving is over. These breaks are never long enough if you ask me. That said, the long weekend was enjoyable.

Thursday

Thanksgiving was a little rough. The plan was to have dinner with the Shieh family before they moved to Southern California. However, they were so busy preparing for the move that they completely forgot about us. Oh dear!

Mom wanted to confirm with the Shiehs but couldn't reach them. The call didn't get through until past dinner time. Because it was too late to do anything else, our plans were effectively ruined. I suggested looking for restaurants with Thanksgiving specials, but my mother was no longer in the mood to go anywhere. :-(

Dad still took me to visit the Shiehs afterwards, albeit for a different reason: he had a laptop with a dead hard drive that my uncle Dong had offered to help replace. Though we didn't lose anything important as the last backup was from two weeks ago, having to install everything again was a pain in the ass. It was nice to hang out with my cousins and meet Connie's friend Luc in the meantime, but things were a little awkward given what happened.

Mom wanted to make Thanksgiving more exciting and proposed checking out some early Black Friday sales. The three of us went to Macy's and Kohl's but ultimately didn't buy anything due to the insanely long lines. It was almost 2 a.m. when we got home!

This year, I'm thankful for the gift cards to Sino and Straits that my boss Bing gave me. They were worth $100 each and definitely very useful. I wouldn't have been able to treat my parents to lunch at Santana Row multiple times otherwise. There are no words to express my gratitude.

Friday

Our family friend Fennah recently got my parents to join her book club. This month's meeting was held at her home in Saratoga. Fennah's place was quite nice and reminded me of an Italian villa. I had planned to finish some assignments for an online class during this time but ended up playing games instead because my laptop couldn't connect to the Wi-Fi.

The discussion was followed by a potluck dinner. Everyone brought so much food that we were absolutely full when it was time to leave. The gathering was the best part of the long weekend even though I was the only young person there. You can see the pictures on Flickr.

Right after getting home, my father ordered an iPad 2 for $100 off using the Black Friday discount on the Apple website. I can't wait until it arrives!

Saturday

All of us wanted to relax after a busy two days. Saturday was mostly uneventful aside from a hike in Rancho San Antonio County Park in the afternoon. Because we started out later than usual - and the sun sets early at this time of the year - the sky was completely dark when we got back to the car. This was a surreal experience.

Sunday

Dad wanted to set up an external hard drive for backing up all of our computers. This took up the entire morning and meant we couldn't do much else besides going for a stroll in the neighborhood after dinner. On the bright side, our new backup system is now much more reliable.

The break was overall amazing despite the misunderstanding with the Shiehs. I'm looking forward to Christmas for sure.

Currently playing: Kirby Super Star