A Tham Christmas

Christmas is as far back as ever as my Mom would say.

We had a full house for dinner last night with Cynthia's Mom, and Christine, Ricky, Shannon, Crystal and Derek, and Carol, Fede, Sebastian and Lillian and Justin and the 3 of us. Dinner I think was good, turkey cooked, but not too cooked, 3 kinds of potatoe dish, brussel sprouts, carrots, stuffing, ... and Carol's Brazilian lime pie for desert.

The only real problem was that the sink stopped draining - I think it was all the potatoe skins that went through the garbage disposal - after dinner, so today I am sitting waiting for the plumber to arrive to clean out the line.

Liam got a skateboard from Santa and we got a MacBook to replace the aging communal laptop that we leave on the kitchen counter for iTunes and email reading. And too many other presents to mention.



Some photos are here.

Nearly Christmas

In the world of the mundane, not much happened in October and November, but here are the highlights as such.

Christmas is Coming, and so are the Thams

This year will feature a Tham Christmas in Palo Alto. There will be 14 of us here for much of the holiday, with Carol, Sebastien and Pau-Pau just arrived.



Hardscaping

Cynthia figured out what we wanted to do with the backyard. A second patio and trellis. After some trials and tribulations with the contractor we got it finished. Just in time for winter.




Skype

I finally started using Skype a bit. One day at work Liam called me on my cellphone to ask me a question. I figured that he got Carol to call me. Turns out that he went to the computer and called me up on skype because it was easier. Will he ever own a phone?

Also it was cool that Ryan (who was on a cycling holiday in New Zealand) noticed that I was online one day and connected for a long chat.

Google Patent Search

Now you too can easily find my patents via google search.