Thanksgiving started with me starting at about 7ish. I had finished the blog the night before and had an easy start. I had slept well (I was up on Friday at 4:30AM with congestion from allergies–I took an allergy pill, and now that is reducing, but I have that old familiar fall-asleep feeling from the med). Instead, I worked on a paper copy (yes, going old-school) of my Dungeons and Dragons adventure, which has reached the point where I align the text and remove the fluff I write when I am guessing the storyline. I usually drift from the original thoughts as I write the encounters. I wrote all over the paper copy and got about 1/2 way with a lot of ink, deletes, and a few adds.
Aside: In my first assignments at the shoe company, we wrote huge documents quickly and revised them as the ideas changed. I remember working with Michelle V and Jim V in Belgium in the 1990s, fighting jet lag and a macro-virus while turning out piles of documents covered with ink, red, and then revised. I remember also learning the source of the virus, reading its code, and removing it from my machine and documents. Unfortunately, the virus-infected templates, and if you printed an infected document after 5PM, the virus would destroy the media it was using by overwriting the disk’s first sector. Nasty.
I watched some more Doctor Who season six (Matt Smith’s second season) and then headed out. In almost non-existent traffic, Air Volvo was quickly at the hummingbird house. Susie was in her recliner in the shared living room watching Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. Susie was delighted to see me.
We called Barb, Susie’s sister, and managed to reach her and Susie’s extended family at Barb’s just as they sat down to eat. Everyone quickly waved or said ‘Hello’ on FaceTime. Next, we reached Susie’s Aunt Joyce and had a friendly chat with Joyce recounting Thanksgiving Parades in the past when Susie and her extended family showed up one year.
After the calls, we watched the parade while Jennifer, the live-in nurse aide, and her family prepared a Thanksgiving dinner. We supplied a pumpkin pie I made and the stuff for yams with marshmallows that Susie always looks for at Thanksgiving. I headed out before dinner started with a kiss and headed across Beaverton.
I picked up a dinner for one at Golden Valley Brewery, my usual source of holiday food. Air Volvo got me to the Volvo Cave, and I then had the salad and about 1/2 of my dinner while relaxing and enjoying more season six of Doctor Who. I just tasted the pumpkin pie-style cheesecake.
I then logged into the Internet and Gethsemani Farms and ordered, for my usual victims, fruitcakes (and just fudge for one family) and added a few new ones. I also ordered more tools from OcCre in Spain for building wooden ship models. I was hoping for a Black Friday Deal, but that was available only on more kits–one is good for me, but shipping was only $10 from Spain (reduced for Black Friday, I believe), and I thought I could live with that!
I switched to my blue dress shirt and took Air Volvo, and soon arrived at Richard’s in Portland at 6PM–no traffic. I brought two bottles of local Oregon wine, the pie (as I mentioned), and some chocolate-covered pretzels from the Girl Scouts (Susie’s nieces hit me up again this year).
I joined into a word game, not my favorite, and then we played an exciting light game called The Green Team Wins. You pick several questions from a random deck and write your answer in secret on an erasable board; if it matches the majority, you score. The high score wins (not me) when the questions run out. It was a fun party game, and I recommend it. It was a new game in Richard’s collection (he opened it and punched it). We played quite a few rounds.
Dinner was with Richard’s kids (I had not met them before), Shana, Casey, who brought Arial (Casey introduced me to Richard in the ancient pre-Covid days), and me. Dinner was late, 8PM, as Richard’s daughter was working late–that is why I could join in. Dinner was traditional, with a few special items like bacon-wrapped asparagus., and the turkey was nearly perfect. Bravo!
My pie was a hit. It is hard to beat as it uses condensed sweetened milk (which, when cooked, becomes caramel). I also used Vietnamese cinnamon, which brightened all the spices (powdered ginger, nutmeg, and salt), and it was, I thought, one of my best.
Soon it was late, and folks were headed to the early Black Friday sales, so I headed home in the fog. It was thick, and while I had no issues, I nearly missed my exit. Air Volvo arrived without further events at the Volvo Cave and finished watching a Doctor Who episode, and went to bed.
I was awake at 4:30AM, as I said, and so I ordered some more Black Friday Deal items from AdaFruit in New York City (22% off of Feathers, a powerful miniature microcontroller, and 10% off other items). I tried to sleep and managed to have nightmares (ugh!), so Friday will be an exhausting day for me. I will push through and hope for sleep later.
I did order more fruit cakes, too. Hee Hee.
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