How was your Thanksgiving? We had a relaxing, wonderful day here at Casa Aloha. We timed our hike out to the Pineapple Dump perfectly – less than half an hour after we got home it began to pour. Our dinner was delicious too, and we relaxed afterwards with our annual viewing of The Descendants. The day started off kind of weird though – I was awakened at 6:00 in the morning by a strong smell of smoke. I was out of bed in a flash, but it turned out (thankfully) that one of our nearby neighbors was smoking their Thanksgiving turkey and had just gotten their fire going. Whew!
We learned this week that YaYu was elected one of the co-captains of her swim team! I think of all her achievements this one is the most meaningful for her. She loves to swim, but because of her disability it’s been a challenge (imagine swimming with your fists closed and you’ll have an idea of what she is up against). She has worked hard though over the past years and although she’ll never be the fastest swimmer, she’s not the slowest either, and her technique is impeccable. It’s especially heartwarming and satisfying that her coaches and teammates recognized all her effort and teamwork and named her one of the captains.
Our TV fried itself the day before yesterday. I was watching late Friday night when it just shut off. When I went over to check the entire right side was so hot I couldn’t touch it. Brett worked on it on Saturday, but we could not get it to come back on. This was NOT an expense we needed or wanted right now, but we ended up buying a new TV yesterday, and were pleasantly surprised by how much lower prices were than five years ago (like $300 less), and for a better TV.
Finally, I want to get it out there that because the blog now has its own domain, I am no longer able to comment on blogs that use Blogger as their platform unless the Name/URL option is available. I’ve tried to comment several times recently on different blogs but have been unable because they no longer accept my old WordPress address.
This afternoon I am:
- Reading: I finished The People Are Going to Rise this past week with minutes to spare, but since nothing else had come off of hold I decided to download and re-read The Namesake. Big thanks to Laurel for the reminder! It’s a terrific book about the Indian immigrant experience in the U.S. Of course, once I started that The Leavers, one of the new books I had put on hold, became available.
- Listening to: We woke up to a rainy, windy and cool (for us) morning here and have been listening to the wind whip through the palm trees all morning. Otherwise all is quiet around here. YaYu is still sleeping, Brett is reading, and we haven’t started the laundry yet (which will have to go through the dryer today versus being hung outside – there’s no sun).
- Watching: New episodes of Longmire are available on Netflix! Brett and I have been watching that every evening, trying to stretch it out because it’s the final season. Once we’re finished with that we’ll go back to Auntie Duohe. Brett and I watched the movie The Right Stuff yesterday via Amazon Prime – it’s still a terrific movie. We should have known something was going wrong with the old TV because the last couple of weeks we were having trouble connecting to anything on Amazon Prime, but that problem has thankfully been solved.
- Cooking/baking: I baked a pan of brownies this morning, and I’m going to make and freeze chocolate chip cookie dough later this afternoon. Dinner tonight is western omelets, grilled breakfast sausage, toast for Brett and YaYu, and sautéed apples with cinnamon and a little agave syrup for sweetness.
My low-tech, old-school method of keeping track of water, walks and French – works for me! - Happy I accomplished this week: Last week was a very low-key one, and other than a trip to Costco for a few sale items (and a new TV and phone for Brett), I don’t think I accomplished much of anything special. I did get the last Christmas gift ordered (for WenYu) – all that’s left to do now is pick up a couple of gift cards at Safeway. I drank eight glasses of water every day, studied French for 10 minutes, and Brett and I took a walk every day except yesterday, when it rained. Hopefully the rain will have let up by this afternoon so we can walk today.
- Looking forward to next week: We don’t have anything on the calendar so it should be another nice, relaxing week. I am supposed to be able to remove the buddy taping on my fingers sometime this coming week, but my hand is still quite sore so I may hold off on that. I am looking forward though to finally being able to take a shower without having to wear a plastic bag over my hand. I’d also be able to pick back up some of the chores Brett has been doing for me the past couple of weeks. While we’ve been enjoying the cooler weather lately, we’d love it to warm up enough so we could go to the beach.
Rambutan look weird, but the fruit inside is sweet, juicy and delicious, like lychee. - Thinking of good things that happened: Our lovely Thanksgiving, and YaYu being elected one of the swim co-captains were the two best things that happened this week. We’re so proud of that girl! Brett finally got a new phone (his old one was almost six years old and on its last legs) at a terrific price. The iPhone7 is not Apple’s latest model, but fits his needs perfectly. The cool weather has been a blessing, and has made our walks very pleasant. Rambutan is at the farmers’ market again, and this past week we found some affordable bags of it for sale.
- Reporting gains and losses: I lost another pound this month, making it a nice even 30 pounds gone since February. I’m very satisfied with where I am right now, but am going to keep going with what I’ve been doing and see what happens. We put $777.47 into our travel savings in November, for a total of $8331.65 saved so far this year. We took some out to make the deposit on our India tour and pay for the Australia train trip, but that’s what the savings is for!
- Grateful for: I’m thankful that we were able to purchase both a new TV and a new phone for Brett without worrying about exploding our budget. This would not have been true a few years ago.
- Bonus question: If you celebrate Christmas, when do you start decorating? I used to go crazy with decorating for the holidays, and always started on December 1, but these days I keep it much, much more simple. We’ve always put up our tree the first weekend in December, but Meiling said she wanted to help hang the ornaments this year, so we’re going to wait to decorate until after she’s home on December 11. We have to move a few things around to fit our tree into the house, but we’ll do that the day before she arrives. I love putting up the ornaments – we have been collecting them for over 40 years and each one is a memory. I also put out a few wooden Santas that I saved from my once-huge collection on the windowsill, and we break out our big holiday coffee mugs, but that’s it these days for decorations around here. Lots of houses in our neighborhood already have their lights up.
That’s a wrap for this week from Chez Aloha. How was your week? What good things happened for you?
The Occasional Nomads 
Congrats to Yayu! You two look perfect in the picture.
I have checked my setting for comments. You should be able to comment. If not, can you please reply to this comment here?
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Comment went through just fine on Frugal@Istanbul – thanks!
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Congrats to YaYu! Same question on the blogger settings – please let me know if you can’t comment.
It was a super nice & relaxing weekend. I got a ton of stuff done (all the bonus days), had minimal work drama, and worked out every day. Stocked the fridge & freezer, caught up on chores, played games with the kids, & had cocktails every night with M. 🙂
Also, huge congrats on a 30 pound loss. That’s amazing! I continue to do well until I go on a work trip. Then, gain a couple of pounds, and spend the next month or so to lose it. Then the cycle repeats. It’s really annoying.
Currently reading Dante’s Wood, and it’s good. Took me a bit to get into it at first, but I’m enjoying it.
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I’m not seeing the Name/URL option yet, but here’s the comment I tried to leave:
I think it’s been just once that we’ve gotten out of Costco for less than $100. Most of the prices you paid are the same here except for the apples (we pay nearly double) and the milk here is a couple of dollars more. I’m not sure about the eggs – we only have those 5-dozen packages once in a while and I’ve never checked the price. We love those sandwich rolls and always have a bag of them in the freezer – they hold up better for sandwiches than a regular hamburger roll, and cost much less.
Thanks again for all the tips on price matching, etc. when it comes to airline tickets. I learned some useful things!
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Love the picture of you and YaYu. Congratulate her for me.
If your TV had to die, this was the perfect time to replace it with all the Black Friday deals.
Great minds think alike, I made brownies for Church this morning.
I haven’t put up decorations for years, not since my dog knocked over the tree.
Have a good week, hope you make it to the beach
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The TV we bought wasn’t on sale, but we were still surprised by how much prices had gone down. It was also much easier to set up, and lighter, than our old TV.
I don’t know why, but our cat NEVER bothered our Christmas tree. There was plenty there to attract her, but I think it was just overwhelming for her.
It’s supposed to rain all week. It is very cool here too – more like January or February weather.
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Great pictures of your smiling faces, and congrats to YaYu! She is sure a hard worker at everything she does!
Bummer about the TV, but thank goodness for Costco. Our TV came from Costco, too, and if it dies we’ll be back to buy a replacement there.
Don’t you love how all the library holds come in at once? 🙂
We had a relaxing weekend, too, and saw Lady Bird with my “kids”. We all loved it. We’ve discussed when to put up the tree, but we never get to it until mid-December unless my daughter is visiting. She has a Dec 5 birthday and this is her favorite month. Of course! Ha!
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YaYu is a fighter. If I had to pick one word to describe her it would be fierce (in a good way). She is well-liked and respected by her peers as well, and has made a ton of friends here.
We are enjoying the new TV – it high definition all the time, which took us a little while to adjust to, but we like it.
It is a given that my library holds will arrive at once.
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