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My wife worked Saturday/Sunday, thus had to sleep Monday, but I was able to keep the dog from disturbing her so we left home (after watching the latest episode of HBO's Westworld) around 4pm. We stopped in Las Cruces for a small dinner (salmon salad and hummus!) and got to Phoenix around 3am. Russet drove the entire way! We listened to a podcast or two and part of an audiobook and then she wanted nothing and cogitated the remainder of the way, plotting for the stories that she's working on for Yuletide.
I was quite bummed and in a bad emotional state -- my dad was in the hospital, taken to the ER earlier Monday morning. Side-effects from industrial-stregth pain killers. I'd tried getting him signed up so he could get medical marijuana, but he didn't want to pay $150 for the permit. I'm hoping he'll change his toon. But I'll talk more about that in another post. We'll leave that with him getting out of the hospital late Wednesday afternoon, he's been home since and resting/watching TV/catching up on email and sending out crap.
We originally had plans to go to a local restaurant for dinner. They had a special for $161 that gave you a full bird, all the fixings, and a pie. AND you took ALL leftovers home with you! I naively thought that since they were oriented towards sending things home with you that you could get the whole thing to do. Silly me. We cancelled the reservation, Mom pulled a brisket out of the freezer, I picked up two pies from Village Inn (country apple and a chocolate peanut butter) and my wife and I made sides: butternut squash soup, orange-scented green beans, German potato salad, and glazed carrots (made with butter and gingerale!)
Everything was quite good, though my brother just fixed a plate of meat and potatoes and went out back to his shop, probably to talk on his phone or watch videos through it. He's becoming quite a curmudgeon.
My two oldest nieces have jobs hostessing at restaurants and had to work all day, my sister and youngest niece had plans to go to California for the weekend. My sister needs a break: she found out her husband has been sexting girls half his age, so a divorce is in progress.
We didn't do any Black Friday mob fighting, though I did buy a new pair of shoes and a low-end graphics card for one of my PCs. My iMac died the final death and I'm having to fall back on a pair of older Dell GX960s running Windows. Fortunately I got a license for Windows 7 Pro, which lets me use more memory. The graphics card will help quite a bit.
So LOTS of good grub! The carrots were excellent, the soup was chilled, the potatoes biting, and the brisket moist.
We'll be heading home Tuesday night or Wednesday (most likely another night drive through the Caucuses), Russet is working this weekend and we don't have a huge supply of food for the poodle. Friday night we had excellent pizza with friends (they kept threatening to take us out for dinner for me slipping them copies of Ash vs Evil Dead, and now helping Karyn with a web design/HTML coding class) and we plundered Trader Joes a bit. Sadly the ginger/mango crisps are no more, but they have a pistachio/pomegranate crisp that we bought and a fig/date that we did not as I don't care for dates or figs. It was sort of a preliminary plunder run to get munchies for now, we'll do a full plunder run probably Monday or Tuesday: we brought the big ice chest as we drove the Outback and had the room for it.
I would like to be with my parents for Christmas, but that's not going to happen. Russet is working both Christmas and New Year's Eve with a break inbetween, which means lots of opportunity for yummy cooking and games! And maybe some snow photography, there's no telling what the weather will be like then. We'll be doing a somewhat traditional Christmas dinner, perhaps with a turducken, and I'm planning on doing a taco bar for NYE! Should be a lot of fun, though unfortunately two of my favorite gaming astronomers are going to be away for both holidays.
I was quite bummed and in a bad emotional state -- my dad was in the hospital, taken to the ER earlier Monday morning. Side-effects from industrial-stregth pain killers. I'd tried getting him signed up so he could get medical marijuana, but he didn't want to pay $150 for the permit. I'm hoping he'll change his toon. But I'll talk more about that in another post. We'll leave that with him getting out of the hospital late Wednesday afternoon, he's been home since and resting/watching TV/catching up on email and sending out crap.
We originally had plans to go to a local restaurant for dinner. They had a special for $161 that gave you a full bird, all the fixings, and a pie. AND you took ALL leftovers home with you! I naively thought that since they were oriented towards sending things home with you that you could get the whole thing to do. Silly me. We cancelled the reservation, Mom pulled a brisket out of the freezer, I picked up two pies from Village Inn (country apple and a chocolate peanut butter) and my wife and I made sides: butternut squash soup, orange-scented green beans, German potato salad, and glazed carrots (made with butter and gingerale!)
Everything was quite good, though my brother just fixed a plate of meat and potatoes and went out back to his shop, probably to talk on his phone or watch videos through it. He's becoming quite a curmudgeon.
My two oldest nieces have jobs hostessing at restaurants and had to work all day, my sister and youngest niece had plans to go to California for the weekend. My sister needs a break: she found out her husband has been sexting girls half his age, so a divorce is in progress.
We didn't do any Black Friday mob fighting, though I did buy a new pair of shoes and a low-end graphics card for one of my PCs. My iMac died the final death and I'm having to fall back on a pair of older Dell GX960s running Windows. Fortunately I got a license for Windows 7 Pro, which lets me use more memory. The graphics card will help quite a bit.
So LOTS of good grub! The carrots were excellent, the soup was chilled, the potatoes biting, and the brisket moist.
We'll be heading home Tuesday night or Wednesday (most likely another night drive through the Caucuses), Russet is working this weekend and we don't have a huge supply of food for the poodle. Friday night we had excellent pizza with friends (they kept threatening to take us out for dinner for me slipping them copies of Ash vs Evil Dead, and now helping Karyn with a web design/HTML coding class) and we plundered Trader Joes a bit. Sadly the ginger/mango crisps are no more, but they have a pistachio/pomegranate crisp that we bought and a fig/date that we did not as I don't care for dates or figs. It was sort of a preliminary plunder run to get munchies for now, we'll do a full plunder run probably Monday or Tuesday: we brought the big ice chest as we drove the Outback and had the room for it.
I would like to be with my parents for Christmas, but that's not going to happen. Russet is working both Christmas and New Year's Eve with a break inbetween, which means lots of opportunity for yummy cooking and games! And maybe some snow photography, there's no telling what the weather will be like then. We'll be doing a somewhat traditional Christmas dinner, perhaps with a turducken, and I'm planning on doing a taco bar for NYE! Should be a lot of fun, though unfortunately two of my favorite gaming astronomers are going to be away for both holidays.
