And now ... Christmastime is here! It had really started earlier, with things like ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger going to her parents' to bake cookies, unfortunately days that I couldn't make it because of work or because I was sleeping off work. And then a couple days before Christmas bunnyhugger's brother and his girlfriend arrived, spending the holiday not at their new home in Kingston, New York, to our surprise. Where to host Christmas is an issue for a future year. For once bunnyhugger did not have to drive them from the airport. They finally rented a car of their own and so did not need to be driven or need to borrow bunnyhugger's parents' car.
But this also meant the natural thing to do, drive them to our house where their parents could come up, see everything we have set up, and then drive them to their home (where they stay), wouldn't happen. So Christmas Eve we had the next-best thing, with bunnyhugger's parents, her brother, and his girlfriend coming up to our place, here to admire our new floor and counter and as much of the house as was decorated.
Also to open a present. bunnyhugger's parents had gotten me things off my wish list, as you'd think. And for some reason they decided the physically largest thing was unsuitable for wrapping up and unwrapping at Christmas at their house. Fair, as Amazon sent it in way too big a box, but they didn't even want it waiting at their house for me to open there and then take the contents home. Instead, for fear we couldn't fit it on the drive back(?) they sent it to our home when bunnyhugger came back after making cookies with them a few days before, and bunnyhugger worried it was something that would eat up our not-really-enough space in the house.
What it was, inside the big box, was a reasonably-sized box. And inside that, a baby-proof gate wide enough for the door between the living room and dining room. This should be something to make it easy to let our rabbit run around the living room, with a stable wall that doesn't need to be anchored to the wall (it's pressure-based) or need the anchoring reinforced (as what we currently have needs).
And then, almost right away, we were off to a local neighborhood bar. bunnyhugger's father wanted to resume the tradition of going to this one local bar that has the best fries in town, and pretty good olive burgers too, and we agreed to this. I admit I was hoping it would be warm enough that we could talk them into eating on the patio outside, but it was about ten degrees too chilly for that. We finally start getting almost seasonal weather, right when it doesn't help us. (It was also way, way too warm for a white Christmas).
bunnyhugger's brother loved the bar, which he's been to before but not in years. It's resisted the stirrings of gentrification that have ruined some other neighborhood bars in town, though. It's retained nice features like a vintage Budweiser Clydesdale glass diorama, or ancient, battered lantern-lights marking the too-tiny bathrooms. If it's given in to upscale things like enormous flatscreen TVs showing the Lions game (they clinched the division while we ate) and laminated, folded menus, it's still doing the important stuff like serving only the food that can be made on the fryer. Plus salads that we assume are bagged pre-made ones.
After that, they all went back to bunnyhugger's parents' home. We packed up, ourselves, and got everything organized to go down to ... bunnyhugger's parents home too.
Photography wise, we're still at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Enjoy the evening sun, please.
Here's a shot of the boardwalk in the evening sun plus some actual beach, courtesy of one of a couple of spots where the boardwalk jets out a little bit before coming back in. I think it may be adjacent to steps.
Beach view, and a pier beyond it that I think is where the woman we talked with at the pinball event told us we could get a whale-watching cruise. I may be wrong about that but it was somewhere nearby.
You may have thought, for a boardwalk the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk has had awfully few actual boards, right? It's all cement? Well, here we are, some of the original boardwalk boards, preserved from a restoration project back in 1984. This is one of those things we missed entirely on our first visit, part of why it's important to make a second trip to places. You discover things you didn't know you'd want to see, like ...
One of these! bunnyhugger here gets a snap for the Payphones That Still Exist photo community that she's either on or that I made up in its entirety. The SBC logo dates this to 2001-05.
One more photo, for your reference. I don't remember whether the phone worked at all yet.
And here's a snap looking up at the Undertow roller coaster as the sky dims even more.
Trivia: Robert Fulton's 1808 contract for the steamship Car of Neptune specified having ``all the joiners' work done in the best New York style, and of seasoned stuff''. Source: Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, Edwin G Burrows and Mike Wallace.
Currently Reading: Modesty Blaise: Live Bait, Peter O'Donnell, Enric Badia Romero.
