Table of Plenty

Unfocused but Some of Best People Currently Breathing

I didn’t think Thanksgiving could be topped but once again my older sister proved me wrong.  In what has become something of a Thanksgiving tradition since she usually is working on the actual day we all journeyed down to her house for a day after Thanksgiving celebration.  I was joined by my wife, daughter, son in law, son, his Most Excellent Girlfriend, Buddy, and our Keene Friend. 

My sister had prepared a huge turkey that her son got up to put in the oven at 4:30 am (or approximately seven hours too early – but I digress).  My sister has a fairly well-deserved reputation for cooking adventures with turkeys so we made a prank call to her (my Keene Friend’s idea) before driving down.  I claimed to be calling from the Butterball Customer Service Center responding to calls from concerned future consumers of her bird.  She was reminded to do a thorough cavity search prior to stuffing the turkey (and remove the giblets).  She was a good sport about her annual teasing about a mistake she’s made in the past (several times).

Buddy was a lot more fun to travel with yesterday than he was on Thanksgiving Day when he kept dropping gaseous bombs in the car.  Yesterday he was more gastro-intestinally kind (at least until the return trip).  He loves going to my sister’s house where he can hone his counter climbing skills with scant chance of reprobation from my too kind sister.

The meal was fabulous and my sister had about every form of dessert available in the western hemisphere.  My wife went on high alert to insure my cholesterol count didn’t climb into the quadruple digits.  The best part about the meal though was sitting around the table with the people most important to me in the world and enjoying the interplay of stories and jokes.  Buddy would emerge from under the table occasionally usually into someone’s lap to grab any low hanging bits of food.

After dinner, my brother in law (augmenting the circle of most important people) arrived home from work and took up station at the table.  His fantastic family trickled in over the next couple of hours and it was a terrific evening as it always seems to be when I’m blessed to spend time with them.  The star of the evening was one of the younger generation who’s a junior in college and singularly pride of the probationary status his house has achieved after being cited four times by the police for loud parties in the two months he’s lived there.

I didn’t want the night to end or to leave but since I wasn’t driving I had to be a little understanding of the plight of our designated drivers – the true heroes of the night.  Buddy provided a couple of reminders to keep our eyes open, even though they were watering.  I am so blessed to have these remarkable people and gaseous dog in my life.

My Sister and I at the Table

My Daughter, MEG, and Son

Buddy Emerges in Keene Friend's Lap and my Nephew

Later in the Evening Around the Table

My Son, Keene Friend, and Son in Law

T-Day Bliss

Some of  My Fantastic Family at the Table Yesterday

Yesterday was about as much fun as is legal because of the fantastic people I was blessed to spend the day with, on yeah and Buddy too.  My wife, daughter and son in law joined me for the ride up to New Hampshire for our annual Thanksgiving Day gathering of my father’s family.  This is a tradition that’s into its sixth decade at a variety of locations but for the last decade has been in Hancock, NH.  A favorite saying of mine is, “There’s something special about cousins.”  That was certainly on display yesterday as we quickly dove into a pool of waiting relatives on a fantastic fall day.

Another one of the traditions is dogs.  My father’s family are dog lovers much to the chagrin of my feline oriented daughter, but there it is.  Buddy immediately joined the milling pack of dogs and with the exception of a pesky West Virginia mountain dog they all got along great.  Buddy wanted to spend a little more time attempting to scale the kitchen counters but spent most of the day admiring the repast from the deck although he did infiltrate and scored a glancing lick on a doomed pumpkin pie.   He even took an unexpected swim in a nearby brook which he handled with a surprised proficiency.  He looked back at us like, come on I’m a Lab – that was nothing.

My son and Most Excellent Girlfriend joined us after being a trifle mis-oriented geographically due to faulty Google map information (provided by me – you’re welcome).  This family gathering had to be a little intimidating but the MEG handled the stream of new people with her usual grace and aplomb.  The final count of relatives and various and sundry associates stood at around forty which is a lot for the house but it worked, as it always seems to.

The big event of the day is the annual family football game which is a lot of people running around with a mild connection to the actual rules.  It is so much fun and Buddy was charging around the field enjoying the freedom to explore without restriction.  He didn’t even blind side my son which is an opportunity he rarely misses out on.  My wife and daughter enjoyed the game from their usual heated box seats in the family car parked on the side lines.  It turns out the MEG is a fantastic football player and I threw a touchdown pass to her which she handled like a pro – a keeper I think.  I’m not sure how many more of these games I’ll be able to participate in because in my late fifties now – everything hurts after the game.  Who am I kidding, I plan on playing into my seventies!

One of the traditions for our family Thanksgivings when I was young at the end of the day was to sit around and see a slide show (actual slides) or home movies about what the family had been up to over the preceding year.  We revived that tradition yesterday when I showed the home movies I had converted to DVD.  It starred some of the people present back in the late 1950s.  For some reason it made me feel closer to my Dad, a fleeting but welcome feeling.

We journeyed home through the autumn night contented and more than a little sore (actually that was just me). We settled in to watch the Patriots battle the hated New York Jets and they provided the perfect end to a near perfect day by absolutely drilling their hated foes.  The Jets were doing their usual posturing but the Patriots outplayed them in all facets of the game and destroyed what vestige of self-respect that team could have felt.  We were high fiving each other after each Patriots touchdown but they were coming so fast that we couldn’t keep up.  One of my daughter’s friends was at the game and she was texting back to my daughter about how much fun it was to see the surly Jets fans suffer so thoroughly.  A good day, INDEED!

The Younguns Table , MEG, Son, Son in Law & Daughter

Buddy and Some of His Packmates Sentenced to the Deck

Daughter and MEG

The Game

Son, MEG, and Son in Law Preparing to do Battle

Hee, Hee, Hee

Couldn't Happen to a More Appropriate Bunch of Blowhards

 

Filial Extraction Missions

I Got to Spend the Afternoon With These Two Stunning Women

Yesterday was one of those days that I used to dread like the plague – the day before Thanksgiving.  The worst driving day of the year as families choked the roads traveling home.  During my military career this usually meant an all-day torture session dealing with hour after hour of pain.  Yesterday I had to wade back into the traffic morass that is Connecticut which is terrible even on a normal day, much less the dreaded day before turkey day.  I was picking up my daughter in New Haven and then heading up to the Hartford Airport to pick up her husband who was travelling in from his tour in the mid-west.

My daughter got off work at noon and we decided she should get to New Haven via train from New York City as soon as possible before the traffic built up.  My wife and I drove down through thickening traffic but arrived in plenty of time to get her.  There was a frantic edge to people as all seemed to realize the penalty if stuck on the roads much later. We made our way north of Hartford without any issue and had nearly four hours to kill before meeting the plane.

My daughter, ever resourceful, had pinpointed a nearby cinema and we decided to see The Life of Pi after a quick lunch.  This was convenient because the theater was in a mall that had a Ruby Tuesday’s right across from the theater.  Since we had a little time before the movie started, we were in a mall, and my wife was with us –she did what came natural – she went shopping.  A pair of leopard spotted shoes later (Merry Christmas 2017 gift) we settled in for the movie.

I wasn’t sure about this film going in but boy was I wrong.  This was a truly fantastic voyage as we shared the desperate survival of an Indian boy shipwrecked in a lifeboat with a full sized Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.  I liked the definitely foreign flavor of the story telling which was still effective and the sly humor injected throughout made the pain the boy was going through tolerable.  A really great movie experience with stunning special effects.

We finally made the pickup of my son in law (one very happy daughter) and now faced the task of escaping Connecticut.  I decided to head back home cross country using some back roads hoping to avoid the inter-state parking lot that I-84 normally is on this day.  My daughter was checking on her I-Phone and said Google was saying 84 looked clear.  It turned out my back roads were faster and even cut the corner to get us to 84 so we were sitting in Zorbas eating pizza less than an hour later.

It was kind of a spooky end because we were literally the only customers in the usually bustling place.  That was okay because I was with the people I love most in the world with a few notables missing but it was still a great day, especially given the trepidations going in.  Now its on to New Hampshire for my second favorite day of the year!

Hunting Down the Elusive Leopard Skinned Shoes

Go See It

Frantic Loading of Car at Airport

One Very Happy Daughter in a Deserted Zorbas

Lincoln Lecture and Ecolitan Finish

Date night last night was viewing of the latest Spielberg epic – Lincoln.  My wife was fighting tooth and nail against going as she hates movies that are nothing but talk, talk, talk.  Well this movie had a lot of that and she ended up loving it.  I think only Spielberg could take a movie involving congressional politics and make it fascinating.  This is a great movie because of the cast.  Every single role had an accomplished actor playing the part.  It was a constant stream of recognizing actors under their heavy period makeup.  There are a lot of photographs from this era and the amount of historical accuracy portrayed is astounding.  Tommy Lee Jones steals every scene he’s in, but you almost expect that.  Daniel Day-Lewis is his usual amazing but he doesn’t seem up to his usual lofty presence.  He portrays a Lincoln that is in keeping with the historical record of a shrewd but likable politician with an inner drive to do right.  Maybe my expectations for Lewis are so high that he will never be able to live up to them but I felt this was not his best effort.  Still a seventy five per cent effort by Lewis is still Oscar caliber when compared to mere human actors.  Everything else about this movie resonated – a great movie.

 

I finally received some heartening news yesterday.  My company lost out on the renewal of the contract (that’s not the heartening part), which expires here on December 31^st.  The replacement company had indicated they were going to hire me but I hadn’t heard anything yet.  Yesterday I received the written job offer with a nice little bump in pay (cue the heartening part) and reams of forms to fill out.  Once again I will be called upon to prove that I am in fact, an American citizen.

Yesterday I also finished reading Empire and Ecolitan by L.E. Modesitt.  This was a combination of two of his earliest sci fi novels into one, very large book.  Once again it was interesting to observe how he has evolved as a writer since these earlier novels but you can still get his typical crackling good story from protagonists you care about.  This one has a special operations operative from a future galactic empire that solves problem by nuking recalcitrant populations where needed.  He is sent on a recon mission to a planet devoted to ecology and this starts him on a long arc of finding love, redemption, and freedom from the empire.  There were passages that were almost incomprehensible but for the most part this was an extremely fun read.  I kind of liked the points he makes about the inherent weakness of democracies to confront evil.

Basal Bonanza

Goodbye Old Friends - Vaya Con Dios

As I wrote yesterday, I had yet another doctor’s appointment, fruit of my annual physical.  This one was for a persistent cut on my ear that kept bleeding and destroying my pillow (hence my wife’s concerns – blood is tough to get out of pillow cases).  I was in the chair less than thirty seconds with the eye, ear, and nose doctor when he bluntly stated – “Oh that’s cancer.”  He said it was another basal cell carcinoma, it just looked different than the one on my neck. I'm starting to buy into my wife's life long drive to have me wear more sun block.

He had to do what he called a “scrape biopsy” which was just about as much fun as it sounded.  He stuck a needle in my ear and then used a scalpel to scrape a hunk of the ear out.  I think he underestimated how much it was going to bleed because he got a little nervous and asked me if I was taking blood thinners.  After the application of what looked like a tube of super glue he was able to staunch the flow. 

The next step is waiting for the biopsy results but he sounded fairly confident in the diagnosis.  After that it will have to be removed which he said would be fairly routine unless it has gotten into the cartilage of the ear which would require some “reconstruction”.  I asked him if the doctor I am scheduled with for the neck site removal in December could knock this one out too and he said as long as it wasn’t into the cartilage.  Fun all around but at least I’ve got time with the kids and family this week to cheer me up.

Speaking of cheering up, I received a very nice surprise when I got home last night.  My wife’s friend up in Maine is a cake adept; she did the cake for my daughter’s wedding.  She knows I love her chocolate cake so she sent one to me in the mail for my birthday.  It suffered a little in the US postal system despite it’s fragile marking but was still extremely edible.  My wife immediately went into “calorie Nazi” mode but even she was observed nibbling at the fringes.

My wife has been working in the basement the last few days as we try to sort out the mess that has developed down there.  We’ve been in this house longer than any other place we’ve ever lived and the accumulation was beginning to tell.  I faced the task of sorting through the books I’ve acquired over the last forty years that numbered in the thousands.  I’m a voracious reader and it was time to say goodbye to some of the books I hadn’t opened since my teenage years.  It was tougher than I thought – like saying goodbye to old friends. 

I promised my wife that I would be extremely selective and only keep books that I had a true emotional connection with.  It was so hard, the connections run deep. 

I saw a little microcosm of my life as I sorted through beloved books and long cherished characters.  I said goodbye to the worlds of Midekemia, Kelewan, Aloria, Westland, Melnibone, Hyboria, Xanth, Darkover, Pern, and too many others to mention – all places I escaped to for all too short a time.  I said goodbye to the characters – my guides to all these mystical places, people I thought of almost as friends:  Jack Reacher, Polgara, Belgarath, Milo Morai, Lucas Davenport, Harry Bosch, Richard Cypher, Thomas Covenant, Arutha, Pug, Virgil Flowers, John Corey, Aloysius Pendergast, and again too many others to chronicle.  I know this must seem maudlin to many but I always knew these adventures were down in the basement awaiting my return and I had to consign them last night to a future with some other reader.  That is as it should be – it was still tougher than I anticipated.

Semi-Intact But Incredibly Delicious Birthday Cake

Ear Carnage

Neck Site

Patriots Beatdown

That's Right!

The end of the weekend left just my wife and I in the house which seemed incredibly empty with the departure of our weekend guests.  We (and by this I mean I) had the NFL Redzone to quell any sadness.  Any show that comes on with the announcement – “Are you ready for seven hours of commercial free football!” has my complete attention and abject devotion.  I have a stack of blu rays to watch after a too generous birthday gifting but they sat untouched yesterday.

The Patriots put together a nearly complete game, so of course they lost two of their best young players, Gronk and Chandler Jones, to injury.  Indianapolis came in with their usual posturing on defense where every simple tackle had to be celebrated (something I detest).  By the second half you could clearly see that the Patriots had imposed their physical will on the smaller Colts and it looked like boys trying to play in a men’s league.  The Patriots running game was not working so they just shifted gears and pummeled them with the passing game.  It looked like some of the Colts players were barking at Brady.  That always pisses him off and this time he responded like the assassin of his earlier years, methodically dismantling their defense.  A great win against an up and coming team but any joy has to be tempered with the loss of two key players. 

I know the next couple of days are going to crawl by because I’ll be so psyched for Thanksgiving – my second favorite day of the year.  My daughter and son in law come in on Wednesday and then we’re up to New Hampshire for Thanksgiving Day with my father’s family followed by the annual Friday bash in Rhode Island.  The Patriots are playing the hated Jets on Thursday as well so hopefully they give them a Colts level dismembering. 

To help speed up the week I have yet another doctor’s appointment today to try and figure out why my ear keeps bleeding.  So I got that going for me!

Welcome to New England Mr Talib!

Get Back Soon Gronk!

Psychopathic Saturday

The plan yesterday, which was a continuation of my birthday celebration with my son and Keene Friend, was to take in a guy’s flick and then consume beer.  That plan did not survive contact with the enemy but it did turn out to be a fantastic day.

After a great breakfast courtesy of the esposa, we lost the M.E.G., because she had a baby shower obligation back home.  That left my wife contending with the three guys, something she handled with aplomb.  I was aghast when the planned guy’s movie, The Man with The Iron Fists, was no longer showing anywhere.  Apparently there was a need to show the latest Twilight movie on virtually every screen available.  I didn’t know there were that many pre-pubescent females around.  The pickings were fairly slim but I settled on Seven Psychopaths based on a strong recommendation from my daughter and the presence of Christopher Walken.

While we waited for the movie we learned that my Keene friend hadn’t seen the latest Spiderman reboot.  We remedied that grievous omission and my wife decided she just had to make a mad dash to the Christmas Tree Shop.  We told her that we had to leave by 1pm to make the movies and she had to be there by that time if she wanted to go with us.  She blithely assured us that she would be there.  We left the house at 1:05 after her failure to appear.

This turned out to be a good thing (something she didn’t initially agree with) because she would have hated the movie which the three of us absolutely loved.  As predicted by my daughter the movie was similar to an American version of a Guy Ritchie movie.  It jumped all over the place but the characters were so twisted that they become inordinately lovable somehow.  That is a tribute to the actors who take these quirky characters and really hang some meat on the bones of the script.  That effort is led by Sam Rockwell who I believe is one of the best actors around and he certainly shows it here as probably the most disturbed yet functional of the psychos.  Walken is very generous and the scenes between Rockwell and him were worth the price of admission alone.  Colin Farrell is the only miss in the cast because he is so inconsistent.  There are some scenes where you can clearly see the talent (and the leading man persona) but others in which he appears lost.  The movie is a treasure with too many laugh out loud moments to chronicle here.

We journeyed back to pick up the contrite wife and went out for dinner.  We then settled in to watch the top two college teams both lose out on their chance for a national championship.  This what made the weekend so special for me.  I was able to sit back on the couch and enjoy the games but also to talk and compare opinions with two of the greatest guys in the world.  One of the best birthday presents ever.