Excellent 4-Day Weekend: Thanksgiving

B and I celebrated a joint Thanksgiving with both of our families this year. After a grueling 4 hour drive with stop and go traffic and multiple pee stops, we arrived in Dallas late Wednesday night. We went to my cousin's house in "Useless" (Euless) Thanksgiving Day and had a lot of super tasty Chinese food, plus a roast turkey. I baked a blueberry crisp the morning of on the fly, since Marie Callendar's refused to hand over a prepaid pie when we tried to pick it up the day before. Inept workers. It was also B's 25th birthday, and my parents bought him a cake and a gift I helped pick out. He wasn't expecting that at all, which I loved. Then we took 121 across town to B's uncle and aunt's house in McKinney. They had been frying turkeys all day and I tried one for the first time. I kept going back for more of that crisp and flavorful skin! The rest of the weekend was uneventful and awesome. B caught up with some of his shows on my dad's big screen HDTV, I reread through some of my college notes for kicks, I learned a song on the harmonica, and ate lots of leftovers. The whole family made a grocery trip together, and although that is generally a boring affair, I was excited to have B along. It is also one of the last few times I'll be able to hang out with my parents for a while, as they have plans to move to China for missions work. We'll see. We went back to Austin on Saturday, after spending the afternoon in downtown McKinney, and had another relaxing day to spend before the workweek started up again. I forced myself to bike in the evening, my first ride in weeks. It was to the Capitol and was moderately difficult because it was windy and lightly raining. I wished my rain jacket had come in already, as my cardigan was not cutting it. It was odd coming home to a super heated house with B sound asleep on the sofa, By Any Means blaring on the telly. Back to inertia.


We spent most of Saturday in downtown McKinney with B's uncle, aunt, and 2 cousins. It boasts a handful of fine restaurants and even a British pub. We went to the local butcher to get some chili bricks to take home. B's uncle boasted that it was made with quality meat cuts, not the crappy stuff. We had already handed over the cash before we found out that the meat wasn't local. Oh wells. We made some yesterday, adding some canned tomatoes and black beans. I didn't take any photos because chili generally looks gross, especially at a low resolution, but it was not bad! Very meaty.

Lazy boy.

Other lazy boy.

B's been making a lot of mulled wine lately. Just simmer a spice packet in cheap wine. He loves that stuff. It is very economical, compared to the craft beers he normally buys.

I'm going to be in San Diego for the next 2 nights and days. HR Generalist conference. Wooh. Hopefully I'll be able to meet up with Nora & Colin tomorrow night. I promised B not to get into too much trouble while I was there, so I won't be roaming the streets at night. I usually like to wander around a city as much as I can when I'm on a work trip by myself. Even if it's suburban awful and doesn't have any sidewalks, like Metairie. I can only take so much cable TV, so we'll see..