Thanksgiving 2005

Greetings. For those who might be interested, I thought I might write a summary of my Thanksgiving activities this year.

Well, to start with, since my parents are down in Guatemala, our Thanksgiving gatherings have been fractured last year and this year. Last year, I was invited over to my good friend Heather's house for the gathering. This time around though, my younger brother, Tim, worked I think, and my older brother and sister in law (Neil and Brandy), went to Louisiana to spend the holiday with Brandy's family. So, my options were a little limited again. I ended up being invited back for a second time to Heather's house.

I should say at this point that Heather and her family don't make a production out of the holiday. They have all the food you might associate with Thanksgiving, like the turkey/ham, dressing, mashed potatoes, yams with marshmellows, and of course the pies; but they don't add other things that you might see in a tradditional celebration. In fact, they refer to it as a more relaxed gathering. Heather told me before last year's visit, to not expect to be entertained after the meal. That everyone would find their spot and nap. But then, she said that every hour, people would get up and go back for pie. I must admit that I didn't take this statement seriously, but true to form, once an hour, there was a line by the pies.

All this sounded great to me last year, this year, and truthfully, I wouldn't mind doing that from now on, in having a more relaxed Thanksgiving gathering, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Heather works in Sherman, a town outside of the Dallas area. She asked me if I could take the rail train from Dallas to Plano (another suburb), and either she or her dad would meet me there. I was thinking of offering this exact solution, so that's what I did. I caught a bus about 2:10 on Thursday that took me a short distance to the DART rail station, and then went down to the platform and boarded the rail train. The particular stop that I was going to was the last one northbound, so it wasn't hard to figure out where to get off at, :) Heather's dad met me shortly after that and we went back to their house.

The gathering lived completely up to their definition of the holiday: no muss, no fuss. I had a good time interacting with heather, her parents, and a couple of other people there. Sadly, I didn't really get to tune into the Cowboys game, at least not by listening to the radio play by play. However, after the meal, which was later since Heather worked for part of that day, when we all were in their living room, I was able to keep up more or less with what was going on by the TV announcements and Heather's dad and one of the other guys there. It sounded like a great game though and very exciting. (Though Dallas lost, they stayed in it and even went to overtime).

Meanwhile, Heather and I worked on her laptop. She had asked me to show her how to use part of her laptop, a media player, and buy and download music. We didn't accomplish all of those things, but we did cover a lot of ground. And, what we didn't cover, I was able to show her a few websites where she could buy music from.

Since we didn't actually sit down till around 5, I didn't participate in the hourly pie run. However, Heather did give me plenty of left overs that I have been working on since then. She gave me two plate fulls of food, one with several different kinds of pies (which disappeared first), and the other with some of the left overs from the meal itself, along with several rolls. Heather drove me home after 7, since I needed to come back and feed Tony, and Heather had to work the next day, which was yesterday.

All in all, I had a great time. Next year's Thanksgiving plans might be different and I might be back with my family, which actually, as I've said, I've enjoyed Heather's family's definition of Thanksgiving, and actually will likely miss it. I'm not sure it would go over all that well if I asked some people in my family to skip my own family's celebration, and go to Heather's house, :) But that's ok, I like the regular family celebration just as much. Each has their own qualities.