So as I hinted in my last post, we left town for the US Thanksgiving weekend to go visit my parents in Virginia. I didn’t really mention anything because I’m sort of leery about announcing to the world that our house will be relatively unattended.*
As is traditional, we ate ourselves stupid though the highlight for me was the supper of rockfish in wine sauce, not the turkey (though the turkey was damn fine). The three hour time change plus the inherent difference in our typical schedule versus my folks’** meant that we were almost as lagged as if we’d traveled to England, but the food was way better.
We also went to Jamestown, a colonial recreation site, and visited the glassblowers’ which is one of my favourite places anywhere. When I was a pup my parents had to practically resort to force to get me away from the place. They still have to nudge pretty hard, but I’m harder to move these days.***
We also went to the Mariner’s Museum to see the progress on the Monitor exhibit, which was quite neat.
The funniest thing that happened was probably on Thursday, when my dad said “OK, we have to get to bed early so that we can go shopping and hit all the sales tomorrow!” He managed to keep a straight face for all of two seconds, while we were frozen en tableau, before everyone fell about laughing. OK, maybe that’s only funny if you know my father, but trust me, it was hi-larious. It got even funnier when we saw that an anti-consumerism organization was offering free hugs at a local mall. Shopping, large crowds, and hugging. Just what my family’s all about.****
But now we’re home, anyway, and back to the grind. And an incipient cold that I probably picked up on the plane. Bleah.
* Relatively. There’s still Rocco and the pitbulls, of course.
** Hint: The phrase “Early to bed, early to rise” does not and never has included us.
*** Especially after being ballasted with turkey and potatoes.
**** You may imagine the sarcasm hand sign here. My sisters were attendants at my wedding, and when the photographer squished us all together for a “picture of the sisters together, awww!” one said “I think this is the closest we’ve ever been to each other.” She may have been correct.
Whoo hoo!
Every 20 years, whether we need it or not!
Edited to Add: Flying home last night, I glanced at the images from the news programs on the airport TVs and I swear, my first thought was "Man, Rider Pride may have gone too far."
Oh, didn’t I tell you? I’m trying NaBloNoPoMo. No posting for me for November.
Oh, wait. Damn.
Well, now that I’ve broken the seal, I might as well post something. Wait, I’m remembering why I haven’t posted anything. My brain’s empty.
However, my teeth are whiter. Coincidence?* I mentioned that tooth-whitening deal that my nephew won when he was visiting; it expired in December so I used it.** The fun bit was when the dentist made the mold of my teeth because I got to bite into that squishy dental plaster. I love that. It’s like walking through mud barefoot, but with your teeth.
It’s almost Thanksgiving here, and it will be nice to have a holiday. I miss the stat holidays of Canada. We went up to San Francisco for a Remembrance Day get together, but because of late notice and a last-minute location change, we and the organizer were the only ones there. We hoisted a few in honour of the vets anyway.
And did I mention that there was Christmas stuff on the shelves before Halloween? I always thought the States was better for that, because they have Thanksgiving here as the barrier, but I guess because of the economic downturn, retailers are putting the screws to consumers really, really early. Consume! Consume!***
Oh, and the Reduced Shakespeare Company made me laugh. You can get their production of all Shakespeare’s plays on DVD now, and I think it’s worth checking out.**** Other good movies we’ve seen are The Host, Vampires in Havana (thanks, David!) and Layer Cake.
And now my brain is really, really empty.
* There may actually be a causal relationship, because during the whitening process I was not supposed to eat or drink anything stain-ey, including tea and coffee. I thought I’d shaken the caffeine addiction, AKA the brown monkey, but apparently even my modest two cup a day habit has a pretty profound effect on my mood and mental capability. Or I’ve gone and caught the depression.
** Funny, isn’t it… the thing didn’t cost me anything, so letting it expire would not have put me out of pocket in any way. It’s not something I’d ever get for myself. Yet I still felt that it would be a waste it if I didn’t use it. People are funny.
*** What movie was that? Oh yeah…
**** Their interpretation of Titus Andronicus as a cooking show was particularly inspired, I thought.
