Christmas Break

I was lucky to spend over three weeks at home over Christmas. Here I am in London getting ready to fly home with my favorite sister. It was really nice, it worked out that I could catch the same LHR-SFO flight she was taking on her way home from Russia.

Being a busy grad student I had to work quite a bit at home. I spent the first week or so finishing up a research paper, and was lucky enough to visit the EFF, an organization I've looked up to for a long time, and give a talk and help work with them on the recent Facebook privacy mess.

Of course, Christmas is mostly a time to relax with friends and family, which I did find some time to do. That's us above winning pub quiz night at the Rogue Ale House, with my former roommates in San Francisco and two siblings.

 

Here's my family in Union Square celebrating my mom's birthday a few days before Christmas. We went to a steakhouse, not the best food for a vegetarian but it was great to have the whole family together.

 Dad's birthday was a few days later (on Christmas itself), this is the family looking very festive celebrating Christmas, birthday, and a very late Thanksgiving all at once (note the pumpkin pie doubling as a birthday cake).

 

My favorite cat, Fletcher, was missing from that family photo but he was around sleeping on the couch for most of the break.

 

One of the stranger moments was when our dad brought home swine flu vaccinations for the whole family. Depending on you who ask, this picture is either the result of my dad being the worse shot-giver in the world, or my brother being the biggest wimp about taking shots in the world. Needless to say I got mine from my mom.

 

Football was of course a big part of the break, watching bowl games on TV and playing a pickup game on Christmas day. Here's a big group of us watching the Emerald Bowl in San Francisco a few days after Christmas.

 

Finally, New Years in San Francisco with my old roommates. Definitely miss them and the apartment. Here Tyler and I are celebrating 2010 on a nice night in San Francisco with about 60 other people crammed onto our roof with no guardrails. Luckily nobody fell off, I'll consider that a good omen for the year.