Turkey Day

So it appears that I am too lazy to update more than once a month. I used to think that I didn't update frequently because I had nothing to talk about. Well, that is more or less a lie. I didn't do a real DragonCon, Renfest, or pumpkin cake update, and those even had pictures. As does the Thanksgiving post, but no one really wants to see the picture of me getting creative with the Busken cookies.

Thanksgiving invloved a lot of driving. It started with my mother, who lives in Florida, calling me up a week before Thanksgiving, swinging into town, insisting on buying me TomTom and then leaving more or less as quickly as she came. Turns out that the TomTom came in handy for the 9 hour drive to Louisville, KY. I met Arnold's mom, Patty and her cousin Debbie there. It was a non-stop laugh fest the entire weekend. It started with El Nepal's, a Mexican restaurant with the "knock you naked" maragaritas. We had a group of 7, including Debbie's husband Ron, daughter Becca, Son-in-law Dwight, and Becca's friend Kathy. I was by far the tamest one of the bunch. Everyone told stories and we all laughed so hard that when we were kindly ushered out of the restaurant at 11:00 (they close at 10:30) our cheeks hurt. Only 2 people had maragaritas, 2 had beer, and we stayed so long that everyone was sober by the time we left.

The next day, the evil eating/shopping cycle began. I was warned about this, but my stomach didn't get the memo. Debbie and Patty took me all over the place, stuffing me with good food and tempting me with evil shopping trips. They even took me to the biggest scrapbook store I've ever seen and said "take your time". I was impressed with myself. I managed to keep the bill under $100, especially considering the "extra" paycheck that comes in November had just hit my bank account the day before.

From Louisville, it was off to Cincinnati for more good food and good times. I did manage to avoid the dreaded Goldstar Chili. I believe that Goldstar is in the wrong market. They could make a fortune using their chili as an alternative fuel. Patty took me to Jungle Jims, a gigantic grocery specializing in well...everything. Need Emu steak in a flash, call Jungle Jims. Arnold flew in the day after Patty and I got back from Louisville. We went fabric shopping and into downtown Cincy. We had fun playing games and eating Busken cookies.

Wednesday I drove from Cincinnati to Lubeck, WV. It rained the entire way. I called my mother when I was at the half way point and threatened to hold the Busken cake hostage unless I had Mr. Bee's Chips and dip waiting for me. If I was going to drive in the dark, in the rain just to see her for Thanksgiving, I was going to get something out of it. She called me a terrorist, but I had chips and dips when I got there.

The actual Thanksgiving Day was fun. My Aunt rented an activities hall of a church so we had this huge kitchen to work in. We had 4 people in it and we managed not to get in each other way, with the notable exception of my mother, who saw a pot of water on the stove and thought "I need that pot for potatos". She didn't realize that Kent had put the pot there for his own cooking. She just thought "Oh lucky me, a random pot right on the stove for me". We actually had two complete Thanksgiving dinners, one for each grandparent(they divorced a few years ago). It worked splendidly except for the fact that we started the first dinner at 12:00 and the second dinner at 4:00. We were completely stuffed; we were waddling; and we still had mounds of food left over. After dinner, we played Super Scrabble. I lost, but I had the best play of the game (100 pts for a four letter word).

I drove home the day after Thanksgiving.

Quite a bit more happened during the week, but if I wrote it all down, the post would be quadruple the length and you've probably stopped reading already.