December Roundup

I’m only a month late, but here is a roundup of things from December 2021! First off, near the start of the month we went to a bar in Hollywood called Beetle House. It has decorations themed around Tim Burton movies, as well as live performances with people dressed up as characters from the various films. I missed getting a picture, but there was also a drag queen dressed up like Beetlejuice as the MC for the performances. The food was good, but also pricey, but that tends to go with the territory for any places in Hollywood:

We also had a weekend visit the month before from my brother and his girlfriend for my birthday. We went to my favorite sushi place in Old Town Pasadena called Osawa, and also spent the following day at Disneyland and California Adventure. They had swapped out the park decorations for Christmas since the last time we went in October, so things definitely had a different vibe this time. We got up early to get there at park open, and stayed late so we were completely exhausted the following day, but we had a good time:

We also set up our Christmas decorations at home later in December! I decided to make a new Santa hat for our giant skeleton, Bones, who stayed up in the yard the entire holiday season:

Last of all, while also technically not in December, we attended the Rose Parade on January 1st in Pasadena. We originally weren’t planning to be back in California on New Year’s Day, but we ended up being there because we cut our trip to Texas short due to the uptick of coronavirus cases caused by the Omicron variant. But we decided to make the best of our altered plans, and go see the Rose Parade:

It was convenient for us since the parade route went down Colorado Boulevard, just a couple blocks north of our home. The night before I set up some folding chairs for Amparo and I on the sidewalk because I had heard the crowds could get pretty bad for watching the parade. But we ended up not really needing to have done that, the crowds were much lighter than a typical year also because of Omicron concerns. We were able to sit right at the front, and have the parade floats pass right in front of us! I’m glad we were able to make it, because it likely won’t be as convenient to see the parade for us next year.

In all, 2021 has probably been a bit of a disappointing year for most people…there were a lot of hopes at the start of the year that society could start leaving the pandemic behind us once the vaccines became available. And while things have become much better, things are definitely still not back to normal in that regard. For us personally, I do feel like we’ve been very lucky and the year has really been pretty good for us. Amparo was able to return to work in person, we still were able to travel and do plenty of trips, and we were able to see our families multiple times during the course of the year. But here’s to hoping that 2022 is even better!