Thanksgiving!

Before we get to this blog entry, let’s take some time out to consider all we have to be truly thankful for. Pssssssh, yeah, right. You do that, I’ll be over here gorging myself. And gorge I did at Thanksgiving dinner, but we’ll get to that in a minute. Let’s begin a few days before and make our way to the Main Event. The week started for me on Sunday when I decided that I wanted as much time with friends and family as I could, which meant burning up as many hours at work as possible. I did this by working a 13 hour day on Sunday, which is more or less par for the course for me. Then came Monday, when I was drafted to work in the bakery in the morning and the dairy department at night, which rounded out a nice 15 hours day. That was not fun. But on Tuesday I got up nice and early to get Nicole from the airport. After getting her home without incident, I went, you guessed it, back to work. Mercifully, I only had 7 hours to go until I hit my requisite 35, but those passed agonizingly slow. I finished out the last hour by walking around with an empty box to simulate actual work. Dead on my feet as I was, I would not have cared if I was called out for doing it.

After work I grabbed some steaks and headed home to make dinner for Nicole and the family. She requested the steaks and acorn squash, and I augmented the meal with a couple of sweet potato dishes I was considering for Thanksgiving. The steaks came out nice, although we have Dad to thank for the. The squash was good also, but the potato dishes were both rather bland. Neither of them made it to the Thanksgiving table. My friends were supposed to start arriving that night, but in the case of Karol and Tom, they got in obscenely late, and Jim had other family matters to attend to, so there was no hanging out that night.

Wednesday was kind of a bummer because Mom totaled her van in a questionable accident. Without getting into too much detail she hit a person who was stopped while yet another person was trying to make a left hand turn. Only Mom’s van suffered any real damage, but the drivers of both other cars got out crying foul and were hauled off in ambulances. After getting her car squared away with the repair shop we did some mad dashing to various grocery stores to get all the last minute needed for dinner the next day. I must admit that my memory on the rest of the evening is a bit foggy: I don’t remember if I went out or stayed in. If any of you Dear Readers know what I did that night, please let me know.

Thursday though, I remember quite well. For me it started with the traditional going to Lake Seminole Park to claim our pavilion lest any squatters try to move in on our territory. I know this day is about camaraderie and friendship, but I come with a game face strapped on and ready for a rumble. There will be no pilgrims moving in on my reservation. The arrival of the various family members went off with its usual Swiss time piece precision, which is to say almost everyone showed up at the time specified (between noon and whenever the sun goes down). Dinner was delicious as always, and I ate way too much. Seriously, my stomach hurt afterward, and all I could do was sit in a chair in the sun and pray that my stomach would work overtime to deal with the pile of food I had just sent its way. After dinner wrapped up it was time to head home for a well-deserved tryptophan-induced nap. Once I woke up and shook off the remnants of a nap hang over, it was time to see what The Guys were up to. I did a beer run on the way, and then it was over to Ben’s house for some poker. Let me say this: I am terrible at poker. No, terrible does not even begin to describe my poker playing abilities. I play poker with all the skill and tact of a bull in a china store. I could not even bluff an Eskimo into thinking it was cold outside. I could no sooner win a game of poker as I could build a nuclear submarine out of a Sprite can. Fortunately it was only dollar buy in, which limited my maximum losses to just the 1 dollar. That I can live with. Later I learned the finer points of solving a Rubik’s cube from Stacey, and left at about 3 in the morning when an argument broke out about the lack of strategy employed by a drinking game. Over all, not a bad night at all, though this would be the only time I would get to see Jim. I would like to see him more often, but lately that has not been the case.

Friday, at least the first part, was something of a disappointment. After dropping of Mom and Nicole at grandma’s house to borrow her car, I tried to brave Best Buy on Black Friday. Not the wisest choice of activities. I could ridicule all those mindless drones for giving in to the capitalistic urges instilled in their minds by Big Business that compel them to get up at obscene hours so they can stand in line for the hopes of buying a $4 toaster, but the truth is I was just mad that the stuff I wanted to buy was already gone. I went home, and since my skates are broken, pretty much sat around. I have been missing my daily 8 miles, but I should have them back in a few days, and all will be right with the world. Instead, I tried to look up lift and train ticket prices for Switzerland, but that only lasted so long. The sitting around lasted until that evening, when it was time to take Nicole back to the airport. We all went out to dinner first at a Thai restaurant and then sent her off into the wild blue yonder. Well, since it was night time, it was the wild dark yonder, and being that it was a commercial flight, that took most of the ‘wild’ out of it. Anyway, into the yonder she went. I went out with the whole crew to Bennigan’s for more drinking. This time I was treated to the unique appearance of Drunk Bria. Sober Bria is a lot of fun to hang out with, but Drunk Bria is an absolute blast! She spent the whole night apologizing to me that she never gets drunk and begging me to not let her smoke. She leaned very affectionately on Karol, and leaned on me to keep from falling over. Eventually, after two separate trips I mnghed to get everyone back to Ben’s house where various couples disappeared off into various rooms, with the exception of Zoey, who groused on the couch that she was the only un-hooked-up with person out of the group. I went home.

Saturday was good times. Still no skates, but I did get the chance to flex my culinary muscles a little bit. I had a hankering for some ribs, o I got a slab from Sam’s Club and braised them low and slow for a few hours. To go along with the ribs I made some home made cornbread, slow cooked green beans, and potato grill fries. I also made fresh guacamole, which is always delicious. Dinner was a success, even though Ben backed out, but was replaced by Melissa, who has wanted to try my cooking, but did not want to come to work for fear of running into less desirable people. Karol and Tom tackled their ribs like champs. They dug in like tornados of arms and teeth. And fingernails. Meat comas followed. After dinner we all went to (gasp!) Bennigan’s for more (surprise!) drinking! Since Bennigan’s had lost some of its novelty, we decided to find a new haunt, which we did by picking names out of bars out of a hat. This was not the democratic name out of a hat exercise that you may think this it was. This name drawing had all the complexity of a modern presidential caucus and involved picking names repeatedly out of a hat until we had a best 2 out of 3, or something like that. It was really the longest possible way to decide that we should go to a place called Limey’s, which is way down on 4th street. Limey’s caters to, shall we say, a slightly different crowd than Bennigan’s. It seemed as though Melissa Heather would have had far better luck picking up girls than any of the rest of us would. I spent the rest of the evening with some guy who looked like Jesus debating the morality of killing hobos. You wouldn’t think that sort of question would lend itself to much debate, but ours became quite spirited. I think I won, and it may surprise you which side I was arguing for. After the bar closed I deposited the guys back at Karol’s house so I could go home because I had to go back to work on Sunday. The usually good-byes were exchanged, and the night ended quietly. Its always good times when The Guys come home.

In other news, my lap top seems to be on the fritz, although mercifully it happened just a few days before the warranty expired. I think it had something to do with the antivirus software I installed, but I’m still working with tech support to resolve it. I’ll keep you posted.

Winner & Loser

Winner: UPS, for no other reason that at the very moment I am writing this, a USP representative is bringing me my newly repaired skate. Co-winners for the week will also be the good folks at Rollerblade who fixed my skate for free.

Loser: Christmas music. I hate Christmas music, pretty much of all kinds, except for the off-the-wall stuff like Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer. You know, the good stuff they don’t play for hours on end on the Muzak station. The crap they play at work does not put me in a festive mood; it makes me want to climb a bell tower with a high powered rifle.