Thursday: I should buy plane tickets.

Eloise looks creepy.

My hairtie snapped today, and I couldn't find it.  Apparently it flung itself nearly into the hallway.

• Uno.
• Those lions look so confused.  "Wait, what's even going on right now?  Do you know who we are?"
• Yeah, that was a bit weird.

Wednesday: It cost less than I expected to fix my car A/C.

Downtown was full of lured stops, too.

• A red panda.

Tuesday: "Wait, I'm dead on planet nazi?"

The big DC/CW crossover thing was good.  Like "they should fire everyone involved in the DC movies, and just have the TV people do it" good.  It had so much good stuff.  Everybody got to punch and shoot nazis, Earth-X Captain Cold has a boyfriend, the Ray and Mr Terrific were there doing Ray/Terrific stuff, Supergirl has an evil nazi version of herself to fight and watch blow up, Mick Rory has one of his best lines ever, all kinds of good stuff.

After twenty years, you get a travel bathroom bag, I guess?

• Squirrel Girl and friends.
• I did miss Supergirl yesterday, which I'd probably just skip as "I know they end up fighting Earth-X nazi versions of themselves", but then I saw that I apparently missed stuff.
• Yeah, pretty much.

Monday: Home again.

The flight was fine.  I prefer the larger seats, but it wasn't as bad as it has been in the past.  I also perfectly timed my downloaded videos.

I discovered you can ask for bacon on the peanut butter bagel.  It was very good.

Well, this is poorly timed.

Tomorrow is back to work.

Sunday: The last full day here. For a month. I'll be back then.

Shrimp and grits for brunch.

I know I pushed a bit for Neptune's, since Cafe Jolie is always busy, and we were just there last weekend, but CJ is probably a better place for brunch.  This was pretty good, but I'm just not won over the way CJ does.

This onion bird is showing up now, so I don't have to fly to Asia to get it.

And a raid.

For this jerk.

 And then I bought a book, even though I've said a number of times that I'm not buying more books for awhile.

There's a deep dish pizza place now.  I like DDP.  This was good, and probably my favorite pizza I've had in a long time.

The crispy crust is one of my favorite things.

Why I like Filbert, in one simple picture.

Saturday: Sleeping in day.

Which meant a slow start to the day.  Probably not a terrible thing.  It's good to take slow days.

But we did eventually make it to Korean BBQ.  It was mid-afternoon instead of late morning, but that was fine.  The brisket seemed better than usual, too.  Juicier and fattier.

I'm pretty sure that I had seconds and thirds as well.  Except for the potstickers, in which I had at least fourths.

And then later, we made soup from the leftover turkey.

It was kind of hot.

Filbert is my favorite animal friend in the game.

Friday: Leftover day.

Which is good, because there were a lot of leftovers.

And they were pretty much all delicious.

And there were some gym shenanigans.

And I paid off a fake loan for a fake van.

Oh, also, I evolved a few things in Pokemon Go:

Thursday: Thanksgiving

After spending most of yesterday cooking, today had the reasonably easy tasks of 1) cooking the turkey; 2) cooking the potatoes and sweet potatoes; 3) finishing cooking the stuffing and green bean casserole.

I was slow in taking a picture of my plate.

The full list of things:

1. Roll with cranberry sauce
2. Kale
3. Mashed potatoes and gravy
4. Sweet potatoes with smoked paprika and cayenne
5. Onion soup style green bean casserole
6. Stuffing
7. Turkey
8. Delicious carrots
9. Apple pie
10. Pumpkin pie

There was a lot of food again.  One of the nice things was that this year had more people to work through it.  We still have a giant amount of leftovers, but we aim to have a large amount of leftovers.  If that wasn't the case, why did we make six pounds of potatoes for mashed potatoes, Julie?

The sunset was nice.

 There was also Drawful.  I think getting the new Jackbox is a good strategy.  I had thought about that before leaving on vacation, and forgot about it until today.

This leftover sandwich was pretty big.  It also didn't bring as much cheese or carmelized onion flavor from the GBC, either.

And now some Animal Crossing screenshots.

A new friend.

A tart.

Singing about bugs.

Wednesday: Cooking.

Also making Animal Crossing friends.

But mostly cooking.  Today we made pumpkin pie, butternut squash soup, green bean casserole, and stuffing.  The apple pie is still under construction, and the turkey is prepped for tomorrow.

I also had delicious garlic noodles.  I am a big fan of the garlic noodles.

Tuesday: the start of cooking.

To be fair, we totally could have done more today.  As it is, we have like six things to do tomorrow, including two pies. Yeah, we should have done more today.

But first, we had to have lunch. A lamb curry burrito that could have used more lamb. Still delicious, though.

 One of the main goals for today was to do the cranberry sauce.

It starts like this.

 And after an hour or so of cooking it on the stove and smashing chunks with a spatula.

It turns into this.

The final product passed the smoothness test, so it's ready for Thanksgiving.

I also saw that this was released today.

Making this the second open ended mobile game from Nintendo to be released while I was visiting Alameda.  I have only made my character (based on my pokemon go trainer) and done the first basic stuff, so I'm not sure if it's for me yet.

Monday: Shopping.

Because we need to get ready for Thanksgiving.  I collated the original recipe/ingredient list into a single list, grouping by type of food:

Broadly into milk, potato, turkey.

But first, lunch.

I don't know if it's significantly different with chips, but the Chipotle queso isn't terrible in a burrito. I think I like the Qdoba one better, but it's been years since I've had that.  This adds a creamy goodness to the burrito that is otherwise missing.  I could have used a bit more salsa, but that's a minor complaint.

 And then braving the wilds of Costco and Trader Joes.  Neither has enough parking, and people at both think blocking everything with their cart is the way to do things.

The final result.  We still need vinegar, crusty bread, sausage, and pumpkin.  Possibly also sugar.  Still, this is the majority of the list.

Ramona and I played Set as well.  Grown up Set.  Well, mostly grown up Set.  She wasn't limited to the tableau, and if she could tell me what third card she needed, she could have it from the unplayed deck.

Sunday: mostly food?

Starting with delicious brunch, in harsh sunlight.

 Then a chunk of the day planning out what to do for Thanksgiving.  We have a plan, and the beginnings of a list, and a goal for tomorrow.

And KoJa is now so close that it's good I don't actually live here. The umami fries tasted a bit different, but that may have just been a combination of not having them for so long and some soggy fries.

I had been planning to evolve this one, but it was in a raid.

A scary monster face that my phone's face detection software found.

"Sleep time is now. Forever."

Toys should be less creepy.

Saturday: days seem longer and more confused when you don't sleep.

The flight was actually better than most.  For once it wasn't completely full, and I had an empty seat next to me. However, due to the daylight saving crap, Bart wasn't running when I got in.

So I got a peanut butter bagel.

And took over a gym.

 Then the train, and not enough almost sleep before someone came to wake me up.

Followed by hiking.

And BBQ.

And an otter cider.

Then some shopping for not me.

But I finally caught a damn Lapras.

Friday: it's always best to spend the day of your flight fighting statistics

In this case, it's my "this doesn't make any sense, I'll just look at the cdf and pull medians" vs "the stuff that doesn't make sense". My method looks more robust, which makes me wonder why the other way is even there.

This is a bad screenshot, but in my defense, I didn't know the egg was going to hatch somebody new.

They're renovating this gate, but I hope they keep the old chandelier.

Thursday: Except oops, it does work.

I called, and the guy on the phone said it was "weird" that my old sim worked fine in the new phone.  He suggested I go to the store and get a new one.  So I did, and the guy there told me that he couldn't make the system accept it for my phone, because it's incompatible with my plan.  Because I have the infinite plan from years ago.  I don't know exactly what I'm going to do, but I think it might be a good idea to bring my old phone with me on this trip.  Just to be safe.

Anyway, new phone:

New phone taken with old phone.

I went with the Moto X4.  The Pixel looked cool, but it sounds like they have quality issues with them, and they're expensive, and they don't have a headphone jack.  This phone is basically identical to my old one, with the following exceptions:

1. It is more square.
2. It is like a half centimeter longer.
3. It doesn't have the dimple on the back that I used to spin the old phone around with.
4. The camera sticks out as a little round bump.
5. It is all new with a fresh battery and everything.

I think it's going to work out ok.  It was also $400, which is a far better price point than $1000.  Now to order accessories and have them shipped where I'll be.

Old phone taken with new phone.

• A new way to evaluate the Faddeyeva function?  Cool!
• No, seriously, this is cool.  This is the complex form of the Voight function, and I spent a long time trying to find a good differentiable form for that.  I still am not happy with what I ended with, so this gives a new starting point.
• Random witches from the tumblr queue.
• A random good dog from the tumblr queue.