My one objective for my Thanksgiving trio was achieved: listening to Alice's Restaurant and watching Pangs and WKRP's Turkeys Away episodes. This happened, so all is well in Laura's world.

There was a notable lack of Alice's Restaurant in our Thanksgiving, which was something JZ and I always made time for but I've failed to pass that on to my kids.

Very successful Thanksgiving with much laughter (the champagne helped in that regard). As we went around the table to give thanks, I started and got as far as "I'm very grateful for..." when EM leaned sideways (very unselfconsciously) and ripped a fart. Sabotage!

Also, we've had to institute a new tradition of giving thanks after the meal and before dessert because somebody (EM) went on a lengthy ramble of a toast that meandered for 25+ minutes (very sweetly being grateful for Matilda's presence in her life) such that everything on the table got cold. This caused Matilda's friend Mia (who is very funny in a blunt way) to bark out "I want gravy!" halfway through.

Food was good all the way around, though. And I reheated the gravy to salvage our plates.

-t will be happy to know I had two slices of pie (apple, pumpkin) for breakfast.

We ate the last of the pumpkin pie last night while watching the Bengals actually win. Now I am pie-less and therefore sad. Woe.

I had pie this morning but that’s all the leftovers I have. But I am headed to the home opener of the women’s hockey team here, which should be fun. I wasn’t going to go but a friend had an extra ticket. Puts a bit of a crimp in my plans to chill all day and pack for tomorrows trip—very little chill this morning as I had to go get the dog, then did a bit of cleaning and now on my way to the game. When I get home gotta walk the dog and maybe go work out?? And clean and pack and then go dancing? TBD.

Matilda's beau and friend slept over in the garden apartment last night.

So they wandered upstairs and I fed them mashed potatoes and gravy for breakfast (at their request) and trimmed Matilda's hair (at her request), before she headed off to do her first Black Friday shift in the retail world.

I cleaned a bunch of pots and now I have more pots to clean! Sisyphus ain't got shit on my dishes.

But I just had my first turkey sandwich and it was glorious and now I'm droopy and mellow with tryptophans.

My niece and her family were here from Wisconsin, so we all got together to run the kids around a park today before they headed back home. Now I’m spending the afternoon helping my sister start her Christmas decorating and watching Hallmark channel holiday stuff. Tomorrow we’re expecting about 5” of snow, so that will be a good time for my LotR marathon/ tree decoration.

Hello, all. Just catching up here after a very busy week. We always host a big chosen family Thanksgiving at our place, but since ND is always in tech for A Christmas Carol and stays down in Irvine from Friday night on, it's mostly me. For the past 8-9 years, my mom has come out from Connecticut and been my cheerful sous chef and co-prepper, but because her kitty got sick (kitty is doing fine now), she couldn't come this year. It hit me hard. Prepping for Thanksgiving alone is very hard and rather depressing, and I think some of it also is the aftermath of feeling the passage of time. This is my second Thanksgiving and Christmas and Dad's birthday without him, and that makes me worry about missing any time with my mom. However, friends made things easier — I had a couple friends come by and hang out with me while he was gone, and ND was able to come home Sunday night so he could help me with the grocery shopping on Monday before driving back down Monday night. Thursday morning, ND and I cleaned the heck out of the house while I finished food prep, and we were ready by the time people arrived. We usually have between 10-20 people; this year, we were supposed to have 12, but three people dropped out unexpectedly, so we ended up with nine total. Good thing everyone took home a lot of leftovers!!!

In terms of what I cook, I do the Alton Brown turkey (though I love that he just dropped this update video; I did, indeed, truss my turkey this year), gravy, a fancied up Trader Joe's cornbread stuffing (I add celery, onion, apple, and dried cranberries), a homemade cranberry sauce, mashed sweet potatoes with butter and a touch of brown sugar, an apple-pear pie, and my favorite pumpkin pie recipe, which includes dried, sugared cranberries and pie crust cookies with cinnamon sugar cut into leaves. Everything except the turkey and gravy is vegan (except the pumpkin pie, which is vegetarian). Our friends brought DELICIOUS roasted veggies, mashed potatoes, more appetizers than I can list, and extra dessert, including a homemade guava cheesecake. Everything was delicious. A few of us went for a hike up the fire road and then sat around and laughed and chatted. Even without my mom there, it was a warm, loving chosen family gathering, as always. I never regret the work it takes to make it happen.

Pix, that sounds delightful! And now I want to try guava cheesecake!

Sometimes a rabbit hole takes you in an unexpectedly personal direction.

FB prompted me with a "You May Know This Person" for a woman I didn't know. But I could see that she was friends with some of JZ's friends at Vassar, and she mentioned going to school there so I thought they might have overlapped. (I think they did.)

I clicked through her pix and saw that she was a professional singer who did classical choral work but also was in musicals, and had a long career. Then she had a post noting the 5th anniversary of her husband's death after a 27 year long marriage and referred back their 90s alt-rock band, Velvet Chain.

So I checked to see if they had any albums out on Discogs and they did, including something called "The Buffy E.P." Huh. So I checked to see what compilations they had appeared on and...they're on the Buffy soundtrack album that most of us have! The one with Rasputina and The Sundays cover of "Wild Horses" and Christophe Beck's "Close Your Eyes."

"Strong" by Velvet Chain, written by her and her husband: [link]

I'm surprised you hadn't run into each other, Hecubus.(When I get a You May Know....it's weird how bad they always are, like, I don't care how ordinal the math is, no, I'm not following the crazy skank J. left the family for, even if he's now over her too.) At least that seems to be proof we are holding off robot overlords for a while longer.

Oh, damn damn damn. Tom Stoppard has left us. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead was the first play my mother and I read together, and I have her nearly-complete shelf of his plays sitting right in front of me.

We read Jumpers together very soon after acquiring it at City Lights Books, and saw Arcadia together at the American Conservatory Theatre in SF. I did a reading from The Real Thing for a theatre class at Sac State in 1989, and one of my classmates said, "I'm not sure I've ever seen you that impassioned about anything before."

Shakespeare, Shaw, Stoppard, Pinter. These were the four stars I navigated by in my young adulthood. Thank you, Mr Stoppard, for your words and your life. You will be missed so, so much.