I had a really delightful Thanksgiving, which might not have been expected given that I didn't go anywhere or see anyone. But I definitely made the most of it. I slept in a bit (but not too much), then spent the morning messing around the house, eating, showering, etc. I then spent the afternoon mostly putting up a Christmas tree - I've never put up a Christmas tree of my own volition before, although I was coerced into several by Terry. Given that 2020 is truly a weird year and it's important to find all the joy you can, I bought a tree - a relatively small (i.e. not very girthy, since I have no room for a large tree) prelit fake one, which looks pretty good despite being small and fake. I spent most of the afternoon 'trimming' it, as ye olde Victorians would say - since I'd never had a tree before, I also had to buy ornaments, but I'm pretty happy with the assortment that I acquired over the last few weeks. I also hung up some Waterford crystal ornaments that I bought in Ireland like fourteen years ago and never had a place to hang, and they look great. And I bought an ornament that is a merman, which is totally ridiculous and yet I love it.
In between trimming sessions, I took a walk while it was still daylight out and called my parents to wish them a happy thanksgiving. I also took a break to make dinner - I made a potato fennel gratin from Barefoot Contessa that turned out super good (although weirdly undersalted - I usually trust her recipes, but I should have trusted my instincts on this one and quadrupled the salt), along with pork chops and brussels sprouts. Not exactly a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but a very tasty one nonetheless. And I tested out a blended margarita with cranberry juice (and cute cranberries and mint on top as a garnish), which was a total winner.
After all that, and after finishing the tree, it was 8:45pm and I could have just curled up with a book and gone to bed. Instead, I kept the festivities going for the last few hours - we had a family dinner Thanksgiving, in which "family" = "my college friends". It happened by accident, since Jess meant to set up a zoom for her actual family and accidentally invited us instead, but when she caught the mistake we turned it into a real zoom for us anyway.
Of course, the conversation was utterly ridiculous. There were some shocking revelations, including Jess getting bitten by rat mites for the past few years (apparently rat mites are translucent and the size of a period, and apparently they had rats in their attic, and apparently an exterminator ran into the house with a handgun of the bb variety and shot a bunch of the rats). We also learned about raccoon latrines, which I did not know were a thing. We learned about a book called 'All Joy and No Fun', which Jess is reading about parenting. We learned about Adit's ongoing credit/debit card fiasco in a choose your own adventure where nothing actually happened. We learned that Adit's children want to sleep with Priyanka every night, but see sleeping with him as a punishment. We learned that Ritu was at work, but Bill still dialed in from bed, where he mostly judged who had the best joke (Vidya was in the lead for a poop joke, but Jess had a surprise zinger that I have now forgotten but that encouraged her to leave the call on top). We learned that Claudia's cat excels at killing mice, and Claudia's baby excels at crying. We learned that if you dial into Zoom from your phone, everyone on the call can tell when you switch away from the Zoom to look at something else online because your camera turns off. We learned that Priyanka has been engaging in retail therapy, which I sympathize with since that's my only therapy too. And anyway, since I am wearing a nap dress that I bought solely because I loved hers and succumbed to the instagram marketing, I can never judge anyone for their covid spending habits.
There were other shocking revelations, and other not-shocking revelations, and it was all quite entertaining. But now, Thanskgiving is over (although my gratitude is not!) and I need to sleep - goodnight!
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