Thanksgiving @ the Kidders'

SO! It is Friday the 17th and I have officially been done with my first quarter of the vet tech program for 8 days. And it's. been. fantastic! Soooooooooooooooo, so nice. I have loved having the time off just in and of itself but especially because it's before Christmas and has allotted me time to decorate at my leisure. I put off anything and everything holiday-related until finals were over and once they were I felt pressure to get goin' on all my stuff. (So much so that at 8:30 in the morning following my last final my eyes popped open and my brain started whirring. So, when I say "at my leisure" I mean it more in the sense that I had time to relax and do nothing after frantically rushing to put everything up all at once instead of my usual weekend of frantic decorating followed by going to work.) But I have finished the decorating and so now have time - and a bit more of an inclination - to post a few things that have been piling up in my queue. First up: Thanksgiving!

I actually don't have any photos of Robert and I at either of our parents' celebrations but, y'know, it was all the usual stuff. The next day, though, we were invited to a soiree at the Kidders' house that was a Thanksgiving/Christmas party/baby shower because Christina won't be able to fly out to CA for Christmas this year. (Boo.) As always, it was so much fun and Robert and I were happy to once again be included in the festivities. The best part was the 'tacky sweater' competition; the sweaters and decorative goodies were provided and all we had to do was gaudy up our sweaters as best we could. I definitely don't have a problem with, ahem, loud holiday wear (Christmas is a time for sequins and sparkle, damn it!) so that aspect of the design wasn't a problem for me. I am, however, super anal and in love with symmetry so it WAS very hard for me to just grab a bunch of stuff and slap it on my sweater haphazardly. Plus, my sweater had a design on it already and I just could not add things to the sweater that didn't go with the established motif! Needless to say, I didn't win. But I did get to keep my sweater so in a way I did. :o)

Here we are in our Christmas finery:

Robert just loved his doofy armband - he was convinced it made his sweater "couture."

And here I am with Chrissie and Emily. (Yes, I was the only one who kept their sweater on after the contest was over. I'm nothing if not festive!)

The little fluffball in my arms is Oliver, Emily and Paul's 5-month-old Maltese/Shih Tzu puppy. He was a big hit all night, as you can imagine... Though he was a big difficult to photograph!

The First Thanksgiving...

for which Robert and I were 'in charge' of the meal's execution. My parents have definitely been through the wringer the past couple of months and so Robert and I wanted to do as much of the Thanksgiving prep and cooking as possible. It really was a group effort, though - everybody chipped in and I think everything turned out pretty well! My parents let us have a go at the turkey, though, and that was my main worry. No one wants to serve up a big plate of salmonella for Thanksgiving, y'know what I mean?

Since neither Robert nor I had any turkey experience whatsoever, I decided to use the Stovalls' recipe for a honey brined turkey. They had put their recipe - with instructions! - on their blog last year and it got some rave reviews. I didn't want to pester my mom with turkey questions every five minutes so a recipe where everything is spelled out for me? Done. I made the brine, Robert manned the turkey while in the oven and aside from an initial hiccup locating the bag of "gibbly-poos" (those are giblets), the turkey was fabulous! Super moist and delicious... I think it turned out smashingly, if I do say so myself. :o)

Receiving an intial consult...




Robert was very proud of the turkey!





The pies were a big hit (I think), even without homemade crust.



This would have been a really nice photo if Garfunkel's eyes weren't so friggin' demonic-looking! Geez.

Thanksgiving Safety Tips

Gosh! I hadn't realized that my last post was put up last Wednesday. I don't really know what I've been doing all week that's kept me so busy but I hoped I enjoyed whatever it was. :o) What's worse is this post isn't even that good! But I came across a link to this ASPCA article about Thanksgiving doggy dos and don'ts and thought I'd be a good person and pass it along. I know there are those in my family - thought I'll refrain from naming names (mostly because the main perpetrator in question doesn't read the blog regularly) - who would just love to reward Garfunkel's pleading eyes and sad sniffs with some Thanksgiving grub. And while this article offers no real Earth-shattering info, it does act as a friendly reminder to those of us that are just so darn giving... Plus, I liked the dog in the turkey outfit.

‘Tis the season for friends, family and holiday feasts—but also for possible distress for our animal companions. Pets won’t be so thankful if they munch on undercooked turkey or a pet-unfriendly floral arrangement, or if they stumble upon an unattended alcoholic drink.

Check out the following tips from ASPCA experts for a fulfilling Thanksgiving that your pets can enjoy, too.

Talkin’ Turkey
If you decide to feed your pet a little nibble of turkey, make sure it’s boneless and well-cooked. Don't offer her raw or undercooked turkey, which may contain salmonella bacteria.

Sage Advice
Sage can make your Thanksgiving stuffing taste delish, but it and many other herbs contain essential oils and resins that can cause gastrointestinal upset and central nervous system depression to pets if eaten in large quantities. Cats are especially sensitive to the effects of certain essential oils.

No Bread Dough
Don't spoil your pet’s holiday by giving him raw bread dough. According to ASPCA experts, when raw bread dough is ingested, an animal's body heat causes the dough to rise in his stomach. As it expands, the pet may experience vomiting, severe abdominal pain and bloating, which could become a life-threatening emergency, requiring surgery.

Don't Let Them Eat Cake
If you’re baking up Thanksgiving cakes, be sure your pets keep their noses out of the batter, especially if it includes raw eggs—they could contain salmonella bacteria that may lead to food poisoning.

Too Much of a Good Thing
A few small boneless pieces of cooked turkey, a taste of mashed potato or even a lick of pumpkin pie shouldn’t pose a problem. However, don't allow your pets to overindulge, as they could wind up with a case of stomach upset, diarrhea or even worse—an inflammatory condition of the pancreas known as pancreatitis. In fact, it’s best keep pets on their regular diets during the holidays.

A Feast Fit for a Kong
While the humans are chowing down, give your cat and dog their own little feast. Offer them Nylabones or made-for-pet chew bones. Or stuff their usual dinner—perhaps with a few added tidbits of turkey, vegetables (try sweet potato or green beans) and dribbles of gravy—inside a Kong toy. They’ll be happily occupied for awhile, working hard to extract their dinner from the toy.

Ted. And the Garfunkel Vulture.

This is Ted.

Ted is a door decoration I bought from a very nice lady on Etsy. (She actually named him Ted and kindly told me I didn't have to keep the name once he made it to our house. But how could I strip the man of his name?! Couldn't. So Ted it is.) He is absolutely adorable and was a virtual steal. He just makes my whole door! I love the holiday season because I love to decorate - somehow it's just nicer coming home to a house that looks happy to see you.

Why am I telling you this? Because I am appalled - appalled! - at the lack of available decorative items for Thanksgiving. I complain about this every single year but c'mon! It's a holiday, too! But because it's not a huge revenue generator it just gets completely overlooked. :o( Now, as you know, I love Christmas about 100 times more than the next guy and would love it if there was no holiday in November so I could bust out my Chipmunks CDs that much sooner. But there is a holiday in November and it deserves a lot more attention than it gets. And this year seems worse than most. Several people in my complex and at least one house on my parents' street had Christmas lights up two weeks before Halloween. Outrageous!!!!!! I tried to assuage my anger by telling myself the people in question might've put lights up for Diwali... but I just don't know that it's true. (Plus, the house on my parent's block is inhabited by a family that I've known for years and I'm pretty sure they aren't Sikhs. But I digress.) And while I've become numb to malls and other stores filling their shelves with Christmas items before Halloween, I cannot abide by tree lots popping up on the first weekend in November. Who even buys their trees this early?!!! They'll frickin' DIE, people!!! Aauuuugh!!!!! I can't stand it. I just cannot stand it. Thanksgiving is a holiday, too, okay?! And even though I don't particularly care for it - Turkey? Bland. Cranberries? Pass. Sweet potatoes? No, thank you! Pumpkin anything? Blech. - I am always a champion of the unloved and under-appreciated and, dammit, I WILL have a properly decorated house for Thanksgiving! Even though it's really, really, really hard to find decorations.

That is all.






On a completely different note, here are a few photos of Garfunkel stalking my sandwich yesterday afternoon. He does this just about every meal because he knows we're soft. (He doesn't actually beg for anyone other than me, Robert and my mom. He knows.) First, he'll walk slowly up to the table. Then he'll sit ever-so-nicely and stare at your food with a ferocious intensity.

Then, just in case you missed him, he'll inch a little closer to your plate. Soon after, he'll start working his nose and sniff frantically all around your plate. Then, as a final assault, he'll make his most pitiful face and plop it right on the table. If you're lucky, your plate will escape the inevitable moose-tonguing. But it probably won't. ;o)

Thanksgiving @ the Trouts'

Christina came to town for Thanksgiving this year and invited Robert and I over to celebrate a belated Thanksgiving with her and her family on Saturday. It's always great fun to catch up with Christina (and her parents - I love them!) and since Emily and Paul came, too, it was even better. We had a great night just eating, talking and playing games*... I look forward to seeing them all again at Christmas. :o) (Well, Emily and Paul I'm sure we'll see sooner but you know what I mean.)


We had to Rock Band it up, of course. Robert hates packing up the drums and dragging them along but Chrissie had never played Rock Band before and it's always more fun to play with a full band. I believe we were called ToneMunch. I think we were supposed to be the Tone Munchkins but it took Christina too long... ;o) Besides, not everyone present was a munchkin.


Chrissie couldn't handle the foot pedal her first time out at the drum kit so she had Emily do it for her.


Emily sang!!! Black is white! Up is down! (I was very happy we were finally able to persuade Em to sing.)


I just like Christina's face when she plays... hee!



Robert shot a couple short videos of Christina singing and they are hilarious! As Robert said "I could listen to her sing all day." It's true. She is such a good sport and really gives her all but - hooboy! - she's not the greatest. (Love you, Christina!) She is a kick, though.

(It's too bad we didn't get any footage of her singing the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" because it was the best. I've never heard anyone sound so happy singing "Listen all y'all! It's a SAB-o-tage!" Too funny. Plus, she said migraine instead of mirage, which I thought was hysterical.)

* The low point of the evening was when Christina screwed Emily out of her rightful victory at Disney's Scene It! You guys who were there know it's true... ;o)

Thanksgiving

This year Robert and I did what we usually do each Thanksgiving and that is to split up the day between our families. I head over to the McCauleys' in the afternoon, hang out until they eat and then head over to my parents' place. I have dinner with my family, Robert has dinner with his and then he heads over to Casa de Kimball for dessert. It's worked out well for us in the past so why fix something that's not broken? Still, I think this year was better than most as I feel like I got to spend a good amount of time with both families and enjoyed myself quite thoroughly at each house. It's nice that our families live so close that we don't have to choose or alternate families each year!!

First: The McCauleys'.




Nobody really wanted to cook - and I don't blame them - so Carmen bought one of those ready-made dinners from Raley's. Ready-made?! Really?!! Yeah, not so much. The above is the set of instructions that came with the meal and poor Carmen was still in the kitchen cooking almost all day. Yeah, Raley's chopped up the stuff but that's about it. What a drag!


Left to right we have:
- Front row: Bob, Rosie, Lali and John
- Back row: Lauren, Maria, Carmen & Robert
(Jose is taking the picture...)


Next: The Kimballs'.

My family is not particularly thrilled with having their photo taken so I don't really have any pictures of my family. Whoops. All I got are a few shots of Robert getting his hand shoved into the turkey against his will.



I guess I'll have to try and snag some Kimball photos surreptitiously at Christmas...

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!!!

I found this at HolyTaco.com and thought it would be a somewhat festive/slightly humorous way to think about the celebration of Thanksgiving. Enjoy!

The 7 Most Annoying People at Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving is one of our greatest holidays. We eat until we feel like we're going to die and then we lay around and watch football. But you're also forced to see family members that can turn all the gluttony into a big downer. Here are the seven worst.

7. THE RELIGIOUS RELATIVE

­­­It's fine if you love Jesus. No one is saying you can't. But you have to understand that for the rest of us, Thanksgiving is the only Holiday we get where we don't have to hear about the man upstairs. Therefore, I don't give a shit that the shape of my mashed potatoes reminded you of a passage from Corinthians, I just want you to pass the salt. I may not know Jesus as well as you do, but if he's as cool as you say he is, then if he was invited over to somebody's house for dinner, he probably wouldn't spend the entire meal talking about how awesome he is. That sounds to me like an asshole.

Typical Conversation:

You: You know, I think if the Colts could get healthy, they could make a run this year.

Religious Relative: And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. James 5:15

You: Right. I'm pretty sure the Lord wasn't referring to someone having "turf toe."

6. THE PERSON WITH THE SECRET EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS

You'll know this person is coming to your thanksgiving about three and a half minutes before they get there, because you're mother will pull you aside and say, "Ben is coming. Now, he's gay, but he hasn't come out to the family yet, so don't say anything about gay things. Everyone, did you hear that? Ben is coming and he's gay, but he hasn't come out yet!" Now, all anyone can think of when they look at Ben is "gay, gay, gay,gay" and because you don't want to bring any attention to the fact that he's got this secret, you end up bringing even more attention to it by striking up a conversation that is the direct opposite of it, which ends up awkwardly becoming about said secret.

Typical Conversation:

You: So, Ben, how about that new James Bond Movie. He's a good James Bond right? I mean, just the way he acts, not like how he looks or anything. Not that he acts a certain way or that you can tell something from how somebody acts, but just like- wow, that's a lot of gravy on your plate. I mean, I like gravy-

5. THE FANTASY FOOTBALL GUY

Football on Thanksgiving is a tradition, but your fantasy team is not. So when the entire room wants to change the channel because the Lions are losing by 42 points with six minutes left, it's super annoying when you respond with, "Wait, wait, I just have to see if Calvin Johnson gets fourteen more receiving yards." To make matters worse, this person insists on telling you the score to their fantasy game, and the picks they made early in the season that have or have not panned out, like they were in a Nazi prison camp and a guard made them choose which one of their children lived.

Typical Conversation:

Fantasy Guy: YES!

You: Is it a close game?

FG: No, it's 46-20. Kevin Smith lost two yards. I need him to not gain more than ten yards the rest of the game, the guy I'm playing has him. I took Matt Forte instead of him, I was thinking of taking smith, but at the last second, I had Forte in my draft que and I just pushed "draft."

You: Great. Um, you think we can change the channel? There's three minutes left and we were hoping to watch anything but this.

FG: Yeah yeah of course, there's just three minutes left though. I just gotta make sure I win this week. Sorry.

4. THE NEW BOYFRIEND/GIRLFRIEND THAT WON'T LAST

This person brought their boyfriend that they met three weeks ago when they were shit-faced drunk and letting people take body shots off their titties. Now everyone has to pretend like she and he are in a serious relationship, even though when he tells someone he's originally from Tuscon his "girlfriend" responds with "really, I thought you were from Fresno...Huh." And since now there's someone at the table that no one knows, everybody has to pretend like they have manners and care about what's going on in other people's lives. This leads to everyone at the table focusing on the fact that this dude they've never met before, and will never see again, is "in ad sales right now, but looking to maybe starting a club promotion business or something like that."

Typical Conversation:

You: I was thinking of buying a new Honda.

Cousin: Brian used to fix Hondas, right Brian?

Cousin's Boyfriend: Um, no. I know a guy who did, though.

Cousin: Really, I thought you did?

Cousin's Boyfriend: Nope.

(awkward silence)

Your Mom: Well, being a mechanic is a good job.

(more awkward silence)

3. THE OVERLY POLITICAL RELATIVE

You haven’t read the latest book by Ron Paul, and you have no idea what the trade deficit is, but that’s not going to stop the political freak from constantly quoting Ron Paul’s latest book about the trade deficit whenever there’s a two-second lull in the conversation. It doesn’t matter that your eyes glaze over like a ham when he starts spouting endless facts about civic policy and the economies of risk-management, he will not stop trying to get you to agree to a political stance that you have never heard of or couldn’t possibly care less about.

Typical Conversation:

You: Man, I can’t believe the holidays are already here.

Political Relative: You know what I can’t believe? I can’t believe that the S&P needs to increase by 33% just to get back to even over the next 12 months. And you know what else I can’t believe? The fact that Bernanke and Paulson have destroyed America as you and I know it. They’re the “experts”? Really? If they were so smart, then why didn’t they see this coming? Now we’re supposed to feel comfortable with these crooks in charge? Yes sir, you can kiss your nation goodbye forever.

You: Yeah, uhhh, time sure does fly.

Political Relative: And you know what won’t fly anymore pretty soon? Our bankrupt airlines. If you think Uncle Sam is going to keep bailing those mismanaged disasters forever you can think again.

You: I just want to eat some turkey.

2. THE SUPER OLD GRANDPARENT

We should all have some respect for our elders, but trying to have a conversation with your 96-year-old great grandmother is like talking to a junkie who just shot up. There’s a lot of mumbling and nodding off and when there is some conversation, it’s mostly just a series of repetitive stories from your childhood.

Typical Conversation:

You: Hey Grandma. Can I get you some stuffing? Are you thirsty?

Great Grandma: …zzzz…who? You remember when you used to come and visit us and you had such a good time? I remember that.

You: Yeah, that was fun.

Great Grandma: Remember when you used to come and…visit us in the summers? We had so much fun during those summers…zzzzz….hi! What grade are you in now?

You: I’m 33 and divorced, Grandma. I’m not in school anymore.

Great Grandma: Such a big boy! Look at you! I bet you study hard and get good marks. Are you going to come visit us this summer…

1. THE RECOVERING ALCOHOLIC

We get it. You don’t drink anymore. But we don’t need updates every five minutes that you “haven’t touched the stuff in six years, 48 days and 15 hours.” And you know what? I’m not an alcoholic. Just because one sip of booze would turn you into a raging alcohol monster who would drain the liquor cabinet and then start chugging Aqua Velva doesn’t mean the rest of the world can’t have a glass of wine. But the worst part about this guy is that he has absolutely nothing else to talk about.

Typical Conversation:

You: This turkey is delicious!

Recovering Alcoholic: Back when I was drinking, the only turkey I would have during the holidays was a bottle of Wild Turkey. And I would drink the whole thing by myself. I was so bad, back then. So bad.

You: Well, it’s great that you stopped.

Recovering Alcoholic: Whiskey, vodka, beer, sake, wine, rum, grain alcohol, bourbon, gin, you name it, I’ve drank it. But it’s been six years since a drop has passed these lips. Six loooooong years. It’s been great, but a day doesn’t go by when I’m not thinking about booze. It’s the first thing I think about when I wake up and it’s the last thing I think about before I go to sleep. I love booze. That’s why I had to give it up.

You: Well…good for you. So, how are your kids doing?

Recovering Alcoholic: It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I used to drink so much. Then I hit rock bottom and gave it up all together. I knew if I didn’t I wouldn’t be here today. But I used to love drinking. It was my life. You should probably quit drinking, too. I used to be like you, a glass of wine here and there and then all of a sudden I was stealing from my daughter's piggy bank just to go get a bottle of rot gut. That’s how it always happens.