Winter in Santa Cruz

Hey, check out our "Christmas Tree"!!!

 I got so tired of using potted Christmas trees and STILL having them die, so I gave up, but our new style is so cool!!! I just need to buy something with the SMELL of Christmas Fir Trees!

  The Autumn colors were fantastic about ten days ago. And I saw these two kitties in this window~

The old cat on the right...he watched me, leeringly! The few minutes I took photos he just WATCHED me! The young one was oblivious, SO cute! playing around~~

I wish these photos did justice... I'm afraid not tho!

The 55th Dad's Club Basketball Tournament

Losing to this team, from Salinas,who would end up winning the tournament, was a hard one.

..."hard" cause Santa Cruz High had a chance to win. The team knew it, so it was a seriously tough blow to come back from. They did take third place. And this photo of Zen which covered the whole half of the front of the Sentinal's Sports page, helped to a degree.

The Kids~ Calendar for 2011

It's been a tradition of mine to make these for family over the years~

Grandmom had these from over the years~the oldest was 1995!

TAKOYAKI and home brewed beer by Ischin Maki

TAKOYAKI!!!! Ohhh after not having eaten takoyaki for such a long time, and on this cold, windy afternoon, when my Takahiro and I were so hungry having circled Nagoya for more than an hour around a marathon being run~ these tasted HEAVENLY!!!

True, it did take me a number of years to get used to the sight of octopus legs, and eating them.

500 yen equals about $6.00 today for those eight takoyaki balls, which we could choose to have KAGOME sauce put on them (like worcestershire sauce) or Soy Sauce. Also we can have mayonnaise added, or not...and then spicy SHICHIMI "7 spices" (or was it ICHIMI? "ONE spice"?) also added.

Below you can see this little space heater with a pot of, probably water, heating. The heater is supposed to help those workers feel some warmth!

Now, one new production has been going on!

Good ol' Ischin~ he is now a beer brewer!!!

He knows how to make his mom happy too! In our little kitchen I got to watch some of the production. His careful cleaning and measuring~

And then in this tank, he next has to watch that it ferments properly. He bought a little hot carpet to keep it sitting on top of~ and wrapped a warm blanket around the tank. The beer he'd capped and served to us had been GREAT!!! His father is a coffee roaster, now Ischin is a beer brewer! I'll take the beer over the coffee any day!