After a series of events that seemed arranged for me to miss my flight, I finally arrived in Sacramento for a very rainy Christmas. Once I landed, Melody hustled me into Ramen House Ryu Jin for black tonkatsu ramen before showing me her new home. We spent the next morning hanging her H-bomb diplomas in her office at UC Davis, then rewarded our hard work with banh cuon, banh xeo, and bun rieu at Ban Cuon Tay Ho in Little Saigon. After some grocery shopping and other errands showing Melody’s usual routine, we had a quick afternoon nap before an elegant dinner at Enotria, where the tasting menu failed to impress, save for a chicken “faux gras” dish so named in response to Cali’s recent ban on the sale of fatty fowl liver. We also installed Dishonored on Melody’s non-gaming computer, which had us stealthily zooming our way through the steampunk world in old-school low resolution. On Sunday, we spooned up more bun rieu for lunch before going to see The Hobbit, the first of the trilogy based on Tolkien’s slim novel. From the theater, we trudged through the persistent drizzle to visit Petco for rat toys and Best Buy for potential new toys. Afterwards, we feasted at New Hong Kong Wok with a lavish dinner that reminded me of what I’ve been missing in Durham. On Christmas Eve, we awoke to a leisurely start, got pho for lunch, picked up groceries and oversized dim sum, then cooked up wintermelon soup and Asian veggie dishes for dinner with the in-law’s. To maximize time with my wife, I managed to change my flight with United to the day after Christmas, which despite costing an extra $180, gave us all of Christmas Day to have yet another bowl of pho and complete the game with a “low chaos” happy ending. My connecting flight home through DC was delayed by more than 2 hours, but was redeemed by an upgrade to first-class. It was easier to say good-bye to Melody this time around, knowing that we’ll be seeing each other again in a month.