Dinner at Salinas City Barbeque.
A nice selection of beers.
Ogii with her steak.
Her big steak.
Lots of snacks before Christmas.
Even more.
Whoops. When I cut open the package this tie was in, I thought I had shaken it enough for the tie to slide all the way to the bottom, but apparently not.
Cows on the way to Ogii's work.
I take notes of which paragraphs are particularly good in a book. The Big Short by Michael Lewis was practically every single paragraph.
Onto Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. I like older books, but this one is starting to come apart.
Star Wars family.
Kitten checking out the fake plant.
A nice sky on our drive down to LA.
The parking lot at the Grove says it's almost full, but it's early in the morning, before anything is even open, and it's practically empty. I wonder why this is reading incorrectly.
There's a Santa house set up.
And a Christmas tree.
The movie theater has a nice balcony.
Pretty painting.
Ogii posing with Alita.
And me with Bumblebee, which is the moving we're seeing.
I don't know who would ever select the very front seats on the far right. That's so weird.
These guys are trying to direct traffic since it's so busy at the Grove right now; this woman in a Mercedes ignored their commands and pushed her way through.
Lunch at Tart.
The bathrooms...
... have this picture with a hidden peephole in the middle...
... with a little movie playing inside.
Right next to Tart is the Farmer's Daughter hotel. If you jump into the pool fully clothed, including shoes, you get half off your meal.
Away we go. Although Ogii needed a little convincing.
The water was pretty warm, as was the weather, so it wasn't so bad.
After that we went to Aelred's for poker. We bought Kendra a bunch of balloons for her birthday.
Kat and Kendra.
Us with our funny Christmas sweaters.
Onto the game.
Break for dinner.
And cake.
Singing happy birthday.
Blowing out her candles.
Back to poker.
As people got knocked out, the played cash on the left side of the table. Here the flops were almost exactly the same in both the tournament and cash.
QQ vs QQ, chop it up. Except I dealt him a flush.
My mighty 72 holds up against two AKs.
Set over set on the flop and I'm out.
Ogii got first place and Kat got third.
We stayed at the Tangerine, a nice little hotel nearby.
Kinda funky.
A nice house all dressed up for Christmas.
And another one.
Aahs with lots of decorations as well.
Sinners and Saints bakery.
Lots of goodies.
I bought some to take back to my coworkers.
There aren't many shoe repair stores open on Sunday. This one claimed it was open 24 hours.
Although their website was more realistic. Still open on Sunday, though.
I guess the original owner died and the new guy is pretty mean. But I got my shoes shined on a Sunday, so it worked out.
Some palm trees with Christmas lights on the drive home.