With the weather getting colder and Melody maxing out on her vacation day accrual, we decided to warm up with a few weekday lunch outings at our favorite noodle joints including ramen, pho, bun rieu, and beef noodles. We also tried out the new Boiling Pot in Davis, which offered a variety of steaming Taiwanese-style hot pots including one with stinky tofu and pickled veggies, complete with rice and milk tea. Melody had just finished the first session of her new Massage Envy membership, while I spent some quality time with Westley at the local Starbucks, so we were able to tolerate waiting with starving undergrads during their grand opening. At home, while Melody’s binge-watching the Gilmore Girls to prepare for the show’s reunion, I took a break from the Walking Dead to check out new episodes of Black Mirror and Westworld – a compelling new HBO Sci-Fi series about a Western-themed amusement park populated by android “hosts” where high-paying human “guests” can play out their wildest fantasies. We also tried unsuccessfully to push ahead with Uncharted, as Westley continues to drain what little free time we had. Despite being so busy, we still managed to roll out an impressive spread of Asian dishes for Thanksgiving day, including lotus root soup, tomato-egg stir fry, baby gai lan, a tofu skin salad, bean sprout salad, and scallion pancakes. My in-laws brought the roast duck and stick rice, our yearly tradition, and left the carcass for congee the next day. Since we decided to do lunch to accommodate Westley’s schedule, we were able to hang out in the afternoon over some garage ping pong doubles action, neighborhood tennis drills, and a round of Pandemic. Westley also joined in the fun, despite mounting yet another fever, but we’ll have to see how he handles the rest of the weekend.