Love those long weekends, and I love them more when you know there’s going to be a massive meal involved. Jocelyn and I headed up to ‘boygan after work on Wednesday. I stopped off at Rich’s house and got the turkeys started. I was responsible for the turkeys this year and I went a bit overboard. I bought about thirty pounds of turkey. I deep fried one with Cajun marinade and brined and roasted the other. Once the turkeys were ready to go we went out to eat with Rich and Billie. We went to Brisco County grill on the lakefront. After that we headed to Falls for “the biggest bar night of the year”. The Thanksgiving night out was a little more exciting this year. It’s still nothing like it was when I was in college but the downtown had a good crowd. I didn’t see a lot of my friends out but the ones that I did hang out with were some of my best buddies. Bill surprised me and showed up at the O and Marti showed up as well. So we all hung out the entire night. We went to The Other Place for my traditional Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire karaoke. The night was spent bouncing all around and talking to Fallsians.

Thanksgiving day I woke up nice and early. That was a mistake because I was tired all day. That is the one negative of having a job, not being able to change your sleep schedule if you want. I had plenty to do though. I spent most of the day trying to set up Rich’s computer while also making roasted root vegetables and chopping up some other stuff. Come dinner time I was famished and more than ready to eat. The roasted bird turned out great but we had a little incident with the deep fried bird. Rich and I followed the instructions to the t but when we pulled the turkey out of its peanut oil bath at the 39 minute mark it was a black, charred bird. Rich and I turned and looked at each other and started busting out laughing. We took the bird inside and showed everyone and we all had a chuckle. It ended up that the sugar in the jerk marinade caramelized/charred in the cooking process. Once we cut open the skin the inside was done, moister, and more flavorful than the other bird. The meat was by far better than the brined one. The only thing that we had to do to the bird was remove all its skin. After that little incident we had a normal Thanksgiving dinner. The whole family was there and everything was delicious as usual. After dinner Terri and John stopped over for a bit. We had a bit of loud revelry then in a flash everyone went home. J and I sat and relaxed for a bit. We put in Star Wars and tried to watch it but the tryptophan, wine and horizontal position knocked me out at about ten. A pleasant Thanksgiving this year.

Friday J and I drove back to Milwaukee. J was headed to her mom’s place in Chicago but I felt like some little chill time. So she dropped me off and headed off. I watched the Badgers beat Hawaii during the day which wasn’t very exciting. After that I went to the store and picked up a frozen pizza and watched some movies. Lights off, shades down, and pillow fluffed. That was pretty much my day and night.

I watched some more football on Saturday while I got caught up on some of my side work. Not a very exciting day, but hey, it’s a long vacation weekend. At night I headed over to Chappy’s to celebrate his birthday. There was a nice gathering over there. Chappy has fabricated a very nice bar in his apartment the bartender running it, sometime times me, made great old fashions. I bellied up and celebrated Chappy’s birthday on a comfy bar stool. About midnight we decided to head to My Office for an end of night round. We played some darts, drank some cheapies and had ourselves a good ol’ time. At closing time I asked Kondo if he wanted to stay over since he had to walk about two miles to get home and I had Rau Braus and some new movies. Kondo and I watched a flick and drank some night caps. The late night was unnecessary but I had to end vacation the right way. Back to work on Monday, crap. How many days until Christmas?