a somewhat relaxing Thanksgiving

I've been busy lately but still got to enjoy the long weekend. :-)

We invited the Hsuehs over for dinner on Thursday as we hadn't seen them in over five months. Mom decided not to cook a turkey this year, but did make a lot of other dishes. Everything she made was delicious. Lily's signature braised oxtail was pretty good too. It was great to catch up with Alan up even though we were on our phones the whole time. I guess that says a lot about our generation.

One of Alan's other friends had also invited the Hsuehs over, so the Hsuehs didn't stay at our house for too long after dinner. However, that wasn't a problem because Mom had asked the Hsuehs to arrive a bit earlier. On a related note, one thing I noticed is that Thanksgiving parties have gotten smaller in recent years. It's been a while since we hosted or attended one with three or four other families. It seems people aren't so interested in "Friendsgiving" anymore. I can't blame them because food is expensive these days.

Mom's friend Hong-Yeh had been wanting to see her for a while, so we asked her to come over on Friday afternoon. Her son really enjoys cooking and made the entire Thanksgiving dinner for their family. Hong-Yeh decided to share the turkey and cornbread with us. It's kind of funny that we ended up with some turkey after all. The meat was a bit salty but made for some excellent porridge.

We decided to hike to downtown Los Altos on Sunday as Mom wanted to see the Festival of Lights parade. Of note is that the streets were lined with people. I had no idea the event was so popular. However, the parade wouldn't start even though it was getting late. We eventually got bored and decided to head home. Even though we didn't see the parade, this was a fun experience.

I spent the rest of the weekend listening to lectures and working on assignments for my online machine learning courses. Some modules are very long and have videos totalling more than 10 hours, but they are quite informative. It's always nice to learn during the holidays!

Currently listening to: "Perfect" by Ed Sheeran