Reading: Fast Food Nation

Moving: 30' NT, 3.12 miles

Watching: "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," yeeeeeeehaw! also "Washington Square" and "My Dog Skip"

Baking: apple pies

24 November 2001: Thanksgiving weekend

This year we went to SPM and JJM's, in the evening, for roast beef, and during the day it was nearly 70. Once we got to their house, though, it was plenty Thanksgivingy. It was multi-generational, which was nice, as I have not had either children or grandparents at a holiday since 1991 and they weren't mine. The six-year-old boy was well-behaved and interesting and not shy, and we talked about Harry Potter and "Swiss Family Robinson" and "Princess Bride."

He'd brought a video Disney version of the family Robinson, and neither his parents nor his grandparents knew what I meant when I mentioned the Mountain Family Robinson, so I shut up. A little while later I asked Dexy and of course he knew what I meant. Whew. He'd seen "Sorcerer's Stone" the day before and "Princess Bride" is his favorite movie. He was a good kid.

Besides our hosts, there were JJM's sister and brother-in-law, their son, and his grandparents; there were RDC and I and Dexy and Clove. The dining table didn't seat eleven, so the latter four sat around the coffee table in the living room. "Kids' table!" I proclaimed. "Good," said Dexy, "they always had the most fun." The boy was mostly in the den playing and watching his movie--this would have been his third Thanksgiving meal in two days--but sometimes he came out and joined the kids' table. He had six-year-old jokes, like "What's yellow and on your body?" the answer to which was something like "ear wax," but of course this was Dexy, and he said something about his wife but thankfully only low, to me.

The roast prime rib was fantastic, although I'm now glad I didn't read the pertinent chapters of Fast Food Nation until afterward. After a caprese-like bruschetta appetizer, we started with a succulent lobster bisque before moving on to the mean, oven-roasted potatoes and onions, mashed potatoes, carrots, rolls, the green bean casserole, pumpkin pie, and pumpkin cheesecake Clove brought and the apple pie I brought. It was good, but I still crave turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce. I might tackle all that for Christmas, plus I want to make a Wynell's pie (from Sundays at Moosewood) for Haitch, if RDC will help me with the pie dough.

Look at Charlie's eyes. He looks like he's been re-animated.

Haitch spent Thursday with McCarthy chez some of his college friends and that was a good time too, with jazz and old friends and good food, including some vegetarian dishes. When we went to "Sorcerer's Stone" on Friday, she had just peeled herself away.

...Monday afternoon. What was I saying?

Saturday afternoon Haitch called me, very ill, and I brought her to the emergency room. She's fine, but all I had said to my father Sunday morning was "...and we've been working on the living room, but yesterday I spent the afternoon at the hospital with Haitch"--a name he's heard many times in the past five years--when he replied, "Speaking of which, I'm having my oral surgery on Thursday."

Did my father ever ask if my best friend is okay? No, he did not, neither then nor later in the conversation. If there's a gene for narcissism, I know where I got it from.