The Thanksgiving that was....

We had a very nice Thanksgiving; quiet, peaceful & we all ate too much. Daughter brought a guy from work; just a colleague we are told. The local couple who are relatives showed; & us. Just 6 but, for us, a nice number. Daughter noted that her mother was much calmer this year than in the past. When I asked MrsD about it she said "no more mother to worry about". Amazing that her mother weighed so on her. But now, she's been gone for about 10 months and things are calmer for MrsD.

The bad thing about having people over is that we need to clean the house - that is MrsD works in the kitchen and I have to clean the rest! Oh well! It is a lot cleaner now. Remember how people used to do "Spring Cleaning" = in our house it is "Before someone comes to visit" cleaning. I'm not all that good but I'm the only person here who isn't slaving away in the kitchen.

After the dinner there is a traditional game of cards called "Piss and Moan". I don't play (hate cards & especially with her family) so I get to strip the meat off the turkey, package it & do general cleaning in the kitchen. It didn't stop me from taking a nice little nap in my chair though before the game ended. Ha! I sure won that one!

Now we get to the greedy month. Corporate greed at it's best! We usually have dollar limits on gifts so it doesn't get stupid. I read about others who end the month with $5 or $10K in bills. Those are definitely NOT people from Iowa born of Depression Era parents! Work on keeping it down folks, there's plenty of personal debt in this country already. But don't forget your local food bank. There are plenty of less fortunate people around.

I've been listening to the downloads from the 2005 conference on Science and it's relationship to Religion. URL is
http://beyondbelief2006.org/ - it's interesting but, so far, not enthralling even though I agree with a lot of what is being said. Most of the speakers are professors and we've all fallen asleep in class! The 2006 conference was supposed to be held in early November so there may be a whole series more if anyone wants to check it out.

BTW: it's 74 with a projected high of 82 today. Eat your heart out Seattle! Have a good one!

Wine Tasting from Hell

We went to a neighbor's house tonight for a "wine tasting". We were told to bring an appetizer and a bottle of wine from Chile. We got there a few minutes late & were the last ones to arrive. It turns out that the wine tasting was just an excuse to have a quiet little party, drink wine & eat. Now that's ok but it sure wasn't what we were expecting. All the folks brought nasty shit from the grocery store to eat with the wine. For example, a shrimp platter that was still partially frozen. Yecch! And then there was the guy who tried to tell us that brie is a Dutch cheese! We took pate which was totally unknown to everyone there. Never again!

Other than that excitement, we are just getting ready for Thanksgiving. My wife likes to cook and tries to make the holiday special. The only problem is that she thinks that we ought to have sweet potatoes. However, she doesn't like them so can't really cook them. One year she did a sweet potato casserole that no one could stand. She thought the recipe sounded good but it tasted awful. Now I just talk her out of having sweet potatoes and everyone is much better off. She also doesn't care a lot for vegetables so they are sometimes bizarre. Haven't had any that were inedible yet though! Tomorrow I start doing the shopping; I'll start with easy stuff: the wine and maybe the turkey.

Anyway, hope everyone has a good week. Take care!

Still crazy after all these years.....

Had to go out & buy a new computer for my wife the other day. It is a really odd feeling because she is as computer savvy as I and has never asked me to do anything like that before. The problem is that her computer has been doing weird stuff for over a year. It is a Gateway 510 (I think); about 3 years old. It started crashing & restarting occasionally. We took it in & had someone check it out. They said the hard drive was dying so we replaced that. It gave us lots more storage but didn't do anything about the random crashes. Then the monitor started flickering. It just got to be too distressing for her to use it & it was too distressing to go buy another box. I looked around a bit then got an HP from CompUSA. We plugged it in and I haven't seen her since! (Kidding, but not much.)

It's funny how things can assume absurd importance. The fact that this computer was faulty & the tech's couldn't find anything wrong bothered her so much that she thought it was wrong to replace it. It wasn't 'mine' so it was easy for me to go buy another box. Now, maybe, we can be happy little computer nerds for a while.

Oh, and it isn't like she couldn't reach the Internet or play her games or whatever. We have a nice little Toshiba laptop that she uses in the living room while she is watching tv. Are we nerds or what?

Have a nice week!