Christmas was the usual fare: travel, eggs benedict, prime rib, secret Santa, wine.


Kaf got to meet his cousin, Pepperoni.


As usual he was cagey and defensive at first, but once they got to an open field to run together he realized that she's mostly harmless.


We took them to the creek where there were a couple of crossings. Pepper found one that was shallow, but mossy. The end result was not pretty, but everyone came away without permanent damage:



Monique brought Sherman up to the house. Pepper still had the energy to play with him. Kaf kept his distance and tried to vulture some early dinner.


Rob's been doing the Advent of Code challenges, so when he came up we did a couple. They're pretty good and feel like interview questions: a circular linked list, tree deserialization and traversal, and a grid of points with momentums that required a heuristic to solve in reasonable amount of time.


Next was a stop in the Monterey Bay to meet Benjamin and see the rest of the Morelos crew. There was, as usual, a bunch of traffic coming out of the mountains. Not being on a schedule, I took the scenic route of one-lane roads through the redwoods.