Thanksgiving is actually one of my favorite holidays, largely because it revolves around one of my favorite activities, which is eating. Oh yeah– there’s some family stuff, too. Anyway, in no particular order, the T-Day holiday so far:
- This year, we went to Iowa to see my side of the family. At Christmas, we’ll make the trek down to Florida. We drive to Iowa, but after about 10 hours in the car, caught in traffic etc., we started to wonder how much would it cost to fly.
- We stopped on the way at Panera, in part because we were thinking that it was a healthy option. Well, according to Dottie’s Weight Watcher page, not so much. It’s still tasty, though.
- Yesterday involved the running of a variety of errands– car washing, picking up pies, buying a University of Northern Iowa sweatshirt. Two things that eternally fascinate me about visiting my hometown: first, Cedar Falls strikes me as so much more “liveable” of a place than it was when I was a kid, mainly because so many more things are so easily available here than it used to be. For example, good coffee, good books, the New York Times, decent restaurants, good shopping options, organic vegetables, good cable, etc. Call it progress; call it the state of advanced capitalism.
Second, I inevitably get lost when I come back to my hometown because a few years after I moved away (I actually haven’t lived here full-time since I was about 19, and I am pretty sure that I passed the point where I have lived more outside of Iowa than in Iowa a few years ago), they did a major road reconstruction project, totally changing the traffic patterns and right way to go. It took me more than an hour to pick up the pies.
- Lots of play with the kids on the playground, lots of play in the backyard, card playing, eating and drinking, etc., etc. I was going to upload some pictures, but I left the cable for that at home, so it will have to wait until we get back.
- Other than that, pretty boring stuff. Good dinner, but no green bean casserole, which is, of course, wrong. My father grilled the turkey, and at no point did anyone think about deep-fat frying it. The neighbors across the street did, but nothing bad happened.
- Other than that, a lot of the last couple of days has involved me catching up on email and determining the schedule for my online teaching in the winter term. Really exciting stuff.
But I will leave you with this amusing item about bunnies cooking turkeys: