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I started off today trying to figure out what I was thankful for. The majority of the thankfulness that I have lies in health, family, and friends. I have these three things in ample form. My family is doing well together with no issues or squabbles. I am in good shape and don't feel that I need a doctor in any time soon. Things are well with Sarah and I now am on improving terms with Stephanie and Nadia. It would be nice if friends like Falkoff would come to Boston more often but that is just a simple thing. I am also thankful to have my spirits high. They are soemtimes lower than average but lately I have been feeling like I can create and build and be successful at it. I think that was triggered by that sales guffaw last friday.

Today we awoke and drove out to Bedford for Sarah's family thanksgiving lunch. I say lunch because the Carveys eat at about 2PM normally while the Housmans normally eat at about 6PM. This leaves ample time for two Thanksgiving experiences. The Carvey family was having some minor turmoils. Sarah's sister Christina was unhappy that her mother and her were both making creamed onions and that the meal would need to be early at about one o'clock. I am not sure if it was explained that the meal was moved for Sarah and me but it likely annoyed Christina that she would need to eat too early because we needed to leave early. So Christina and Nick boycotted Thanksgiving because it was starting at 1PM instead of the advertised and regular 2PM and because of the challenges with potential duplicate creamed onions. I had never had creamed onions before and although I was unable to sample two different dishes of it I am happy to report that I like them very much. I may have sweet dreams of creamy and cheesy onions tonight.

Sarah and I drove to Newton first to pick-up my car. During the ride we had a nice animated discussion about whether or not people who are slowly losing their minds or mildly insane needed to take psychiatric medication. The discussion was triggered because her grandmother believes that the Rhode Island mafia is out to steal her jewelry and using strange rays to put pain into her leg. My argument was that all drugs like SSRIs or anti-psychotics have side effects. Some are health related and others are just that people feel like crap, tired, and not themselves. Sarah thinks that regardless people should be on the drugs. We aren't exactly in a world free of people who are or could use mental health drugs. I used Jeremy as an example of someone who is pretty tired all the time and not terribly motivated to do much. We ran out of time before we could finish what could have been a six hour discussion.

As we pulled into the driveway at the Carveys WBCN had just started playing their Thanksgiving traditional noon-time Alices Restaurant. Sarah and I were in separate cars in order to facilitate separating if necessary due to Thanksgiving commitments and she was talking on her phone. So I listened to about ten minutes of the song with the radio blasting before she knocked for me to go in with her. The song was reaching a crucial point where Arlo is on the bench with the father rapers but I got out in the name of boyfriendly-familial duty and promptly upon going inside commandeered a boom-box radio from her father's study and tuned the radio near WBCN only to find that Alices Restaurant was still on the radio a few minutes back giving me a complete experience while munching on snacks and chopping into the Camenbert cheese.

We stopped downstairs to get a demo of the top-secret Puma project. That is Sarah's dad's project to build an assisted leg spring. In the basement were Sarah's dad, her brother Matthew, and Matthew's friend Ben. Ben was in the military because when I mentioned that the military should buy the Puma device he let me know that it takes six years for the military to buy anything. Whenever he referred to getting a new item he called the people who got them "we". He said that the military still uses cotton shirts in Iraq just like the ones in Vietnam instead of the new polypro shirts they sell at EMS because it will take them another six years to change the policy. He said it takes 6 years to change the socks they wear. Because of that he thought that it would be a long time before the US military would adopt Puma for soldiers.

We went upstairs to watch Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkahban. It was a cute movie although it was a bit confusing exactly what happened in the end. It wasn't as confusing as the scene at the end of Once Upon a Time in America when Max walks behind a garbage truck and disappears. I noticed during the Harry Potter that at the crucial scene when Harry is being freed from an unknown force from some hooded evil wraith-like things that what frees him is a deer's head that appears and then a bright light appears over the head of the deer. I thought it looked familiar and then realized that it was very similar symbols to the jaegermeister logo.

Sidenote:I went to the german jaegermeister web site but two deers started yelling at me in German and I needed to shut the window down quickly. It was very scary. The US site is much less scary.


I got a call from Newton while I was in Bedford from my dad. He wanted to warn me that Matthew, my cousin, was very excited to see Tuffy again. This held two problems. The first is that Tuffy died about three months ago. The second was that nobody wanted to tell Matthew about this and because death is a difficult topic they were going to leave it until later. So I was to stick with the party line about Tuffy. Tuffy isn't here because Karen is eating Thanksgiving dinner at someone else's house. Normally I would push hard to expose him to death sooner than later but other things were revealed to me that made me happy to stick to the party line. So if Matthew asks you about Tuffy... he is alive and well until further notice.

Bedford was a nice dinner and everyone was having a good time with the food. I started eating before everyone is served because I was raised to eat quickly before Falkoff got my food. But other than that minor incident all went well at the Carveys. I ate a half portion of dinner and a piece of apple pie for dessert to save room for dinner number two. I thought about eating the pumpkin pie but held off.

In Newton we arrived to find the dogs barking at us from inside the back of the Volvo station wagon. They were imprisoned there for the Thanksgiving feast. Everyone but Dave had arrived in Newton and were still cutting and cooking the food. Since we have two vegetarians in our family, Matthew and Lisa, they were working hard to make the classic Thanksgiving tofurky feast and green beans in garlic while my dad was pulling the turkey soaked stuffing out after having carved the 13 pounder.

After eating we all wanted to go watch Tenacious D which was a present from Lisa to dad on his birthday. It is a series of Jack Black sketches and songs from HBO. At first we were going to watch it upstairs but I couldn't get the audio to work fast enough and people were happier in the living room. Sarah had voiced her suspicion that Jack Black may not be suitable for a ten year old child but we figured it couldn't be that bad. As soon as the first sketch came on we found out within ten seconds how bad it could be. The first song was something like "fucker, fucking, you fuck it all, yeah, we rock". So everyone started trying to drown it out with noise of talking because the remote control for the volume didn't work. Matthew was rushed out of the living room and his father Paul and him went to play games a few rooms over while we played the video for another fifteen minutes or so. They could still hear the video and Matthew started to complain about all the curse words he was hearing so we figured it was time to stop.

For a while we told some stories in the foyer. Lisa was telling a story from grandma Louise about one day she came home from the train and was amazed to hear a conversation that went something like this.

Person a: "Hey Motherfucka!"
Person b: "Motherfucka"
Person a: "Fuckin a motherfucka"
Person b: "Fuck yeah motherfucka"
Person a: "Right motherfuckah.."

She also mentioned that grandma had told the following joke to her once. A family has a baby and the baby is born and says "Mother" as soon as it's born. The mother says. "I told you the baby is smart. It even knows half a word."

When that conversation got old we started talking about giant evil bunnies. That led to a little conversation on Donnie Darko and Harvey, two very different movies with six foot imaginary rabbits. They would make a good double feature.

We broke for dessert and once again we had apple pie and pumpkin pie. This time I opted for the pumpkin pie. Mom noticed that I had gotten a haircut. Dave asked if I got it from the Irish woman I had written about before so I told her that I got it at Great Cuts. Judy said that she finally could no longer cut Matthews hair himself because he had recently asked her to make it thinner and since this wasn't something she knew how to do she would pass the guilt on to the barbers at Great Cuts in Harvard Square. Lisa had called to ask if a local hair establishment was open and was told to come on over and that they would be expecting her only to arrive at an all african american hair stylist shop. She had gotten the haircut but both her and the proprieter hadn't expected what they discovered. My dad piped in that he has gotten his hair cut at Frank's barbershop in Belmont for the past 29 years.

Then we got to talking about dentists with good and bad experiences. Lisa had had an awful time with getting the mouth guard that is supposed to stop her from grinding her teeth at night. They first sent notice for her to pick it up by calling my mother and then they kept telling her to pick it up so she asked them to send it to her and then finally when my mother went in for an appointment they asked my mother why Lisa hadn't picked it up. They finally sent her two mouth guards instead of one and charged her for both. $700 total. It was one of the few things I have seen my sister has blown-up and been utterly angry with. Judy had gotten charged $1500 by Sprint because they changed her plan from ten cents a minute to two dollars a minute for International calls. Judy also had trouble with her dentist because he was a snob. He would say things like "What do you think about the MCAS?" and then follow-up with "I don't have to worry about it because my children go to private schools." She finally got some revenge upon him when he asked whether she celebrates chanukah or christmas. Her answer was that she is an Athiest so she didn't celebrate either.

You could tell that Matthew was ready to go because he started playing with the light switch dimming the light on and off about six times. It was like the dimmer before a play is about to start. He told Paul in no uncertain terms that he wanted to leave as soon as possible. So Judy's family left and then Lisa and Dave left to go to their second Thanksgiving desert with Dave's father and mother.

Dave's father is a psychiatrist and prescribes drugs to people who are a little crazy. Sarah and I watched Tenacious D with my parents and then went back home to Brookline.