Thanksgiving is traditionally a time spent with members of your family. When I was living in Texas, 2000 miles away, I came home for Thanksgiving once and only once. The airports were nightmares (and this was before 9/11 security screenings), the airline lost my luggage and it was a chaotic 72 hours spent in preview of a trip I would be making in a mere three weeks anyway. So I stopped coming for Thanksgivings after that.

When I moved to DC in 1995 it was much easier to go gone for Thanksgiving since it was a 90-minute drive. I liked arrive on Wednesday evening so that I could wake up to the smell of the turkey, a ham, stuffing and all the other sides baking away, my Mom getting up early to get everything started. She would have a checkoff list if everything she was preparing and the order in which it needed to be started. She would have two or three ovens going at the same time, all burners in the stove on and then be using country space as prep area or, more likely, rolling her homemade pie crusts. She’d let us help out: chopping celery or rolling the dough, opening canned goods or getting the table ready. I miss those days.

As my Mother’s ALS progressed to the point where she could not perform these activities, Thanksgiving dinner responsibilities have been passed on to aunt Darlene or, currently, my cousin Deidre. She has a huge Great Room and it’s a good place to hang with your plate and watch the football. We’re never too formal.

A couple of months ago my Dad informed me that my middle brother and sister-in-law were going to visit her family in upstate New York. This means that the kids, my niece and nephew, are going to be out of town for the holiday. Possibly rightfully so, this is my family’s only bonding agent and without their presence everything falls apart. Case in point: my Dad also says to me “I know you sometimes go and do things with your friends or have plans so don’t feel like you have to cone down.” Wow. Not only have I attended the last 13 Thanksgiving dinners (and every other family event during these years) but I’ve also carved the turkey every time. Has this gone unnoticed?

So presented with the opportunity for a skip, I took it. It will give me time to prepare for Saturday’s brunch and the opportunity to sleep in is always good.

for everyone, everyone, to realize that Fox News really spews hatred. My Father (and not the only family member) says he listens (only) to this channel because they tell him what he wants to hear. Is this a proper way to be receiving news? I don’t think so. Even I would become bored receiving the news only I wanted to hear. It’s like trying to convince the head of the Britney Spears fan club that she is, in fact, a schizophrenic nutjob. Can’t you see through it?

Sadly, as I write this I think of the megalomaniacal behavior of Dumbya and these people have followed them, and then realize, is there anyway to convince the blind?

There’s only two weeks to go in this seemingly endless campaign that has been going on. Regardless of the outcome we will be able to wipe the slate clean, and start rebuilding our divisive animosity and disdain for one another anew.

If the Democrats win, the Republicans will continue to mask their bigotry and lies behind Fear Of A Black Planet, while Democrats, and probably the rest of global civilization, will go down in a fiery demise after McCain dies in office and Sarah Palin starts shooking nukes out of helicopters across her backyard toward Russia. Live out your own apocalypse.

It’s a lose/lose situation.

I wish my family shared the same political and social beliefs I have. I’m the one that defected from them though, so they aren’t really the ones to blame. I’m the traitor in this situation.

It would be easier, however, if we saw eye-to-eye on any one thing. The fact that we don’t puts up communication barriers to most things with the exception of light banter. I always know it’s time to end the phone conversation with the weather is brought up. In a familial gathering, I usually sit quietly, waiting for their bigotry talk to end or the departure time for my train, whichever comes first. I’ll let you speculate as to the outcome of who wins that grudge match.

We don’t discuss politics in my family, or at least we never used to. Maybe I wasn’t around during campaigns for those college + years while I lived in Texas and therefore didn’t hear them. But then Fox News didn’t exist then either, drilling it into their thinking during every waking moment.

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Yesterday I attended my fourth Walk to Defeat ALS. This year I designed shirts that we could all wear to support our team, called Jo’s Kids after my Mom of course. Even with a small printing omission I think they turned out quite nice and everybody seemed to enjoy them. Plus it was nice presenting a unified front with all the other teams that have coordinating t-shirts.

Walkers this year are (l-r): John, Narcisso, Deidre (front), Butch (rear), Waima, Landon, Keli, Isabelle, Kelly, Chuck A. (rear), Will & Sarah Jane (in stroller), Dad, Jacki, Chuck H.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease,” is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed. You can help in the fight against this horrible disease by donating here. 

I like to sleep in on Sundays. Hell, I’d like to sleep in every day, but necessities like shelter, food and that unlucky lottery ticket prevent that from happening.

My alarm was set for 8:00 this morning and after two snooze hits I finally got into gear. I’m out on the bike at 8:50, on time to meet my brother and his family for a DC Ducks tourist tour. While the DC Ducks is the quirkiest of all the traditional DC tourist tours, I was still excited about doing it, and especially with my niece and nephew. While Will is too young to remember our excursion (he’s only 18 mos) Sarah Jane probably will keep this in memory, especially when we bus dipped into the river for the boat part of the trip. She even got to steer the boat for a while! Apparently, she likes going in circles, but I think that’s because she wasn’t big enough to see over the bus/boat’s dashboard.

After a quick lunch at Union Station, I left to get some things done before the evening and took an extended bike tour throughout Capitol Hill, just because the weather was so pleasant.

Tonight I met up with EFP and his new beau, and friend Justin whom I hadn’t seen in about six years. It’s EFPs 40th birthday which we all know is the new 30th. We met up for some meet-n-greet cocktails and then headed over to Rice for dinner. Our evening was filled with wine, plenty of food for the four of us and lots and lots of loud laughter. All in all it was a pretty fun evening, EFP had a great b-day, and I was able to catch a not too late bus back across town.

I don’t have any pix of the evening since the restaurant was so dark and the iPhone doens’t have a flash. That’s one thing that I’m regretting about not lugging around my actual camera anymore, is that there aren’t a lot of nighttime pix anymore. We’ll have to look into that. The old camera I have is pretty bulky, maybe it’s time to get a new, slimmer one?

Today is reminiscent of those Saturdays I had in Houston, the Montrose, of waking up late and having too many things to do, too little time to do them in. And lots of habits and distractions <wink>. Thankfully, there is no Jack-In-The-Box. Instead, there is Olympic watching, garden weeding and biking on a rather pleasant August day. 

Last night I checked a bookmark I had made a couple of weeks ago. It is a chicken taco recipe and while I think I have the recipe for chicken soft tacos down, I’m always open for new ideas. So while revisiting this recipe I checked out the current posting for this blog and after scrolling past the breakfast burrito recipe, there is an enticing photo of spiced rubbed salmon on a cedar plank recipe. Although I do not own cedar planks (apparently you can get them at “finer” grocery stores) I kept reading through the description and once at the recipe I discovered that, yes, I have brown sugar, yes, I have kosher salt, yes, I have ancho chili, yes, I have ground cumin, yes, I have ground black pepper, and yes, I have honey all in my cupboard. I also have salmon steaks in my freezer. So guess what I’m having for dinner tonight?

My brother has called and asked if I want to join him and his family tomorrow for DC Ducks. For non-Cap City rezzies, DC Ducks is an amphibious tour bus which takes you around the tourist sites and takes you through a plunge in the Potomac. I’ve always wanted to do this, cheezy as it is, and this my opportunity!

Batman tonight? Yes? No? Maybe so?

Yesterday I drove down to my four-year-old niece’s birthday party. My brother and sister-in-law pretty much rocked it out for a kid’s birthday party. It was about 95 degrees but the kids had a two pools (with slides), one squiggly water hose thingie, a giant beach ball that also shot water out of it and a blowup moonbounce. Occasionally I would venture out of the protection of the two tents erected for the adults, but a quick trip back was always in order; it was too bloody hot. So while the kids ran around and had fun, I think most of the adults enjoyed the shade and the ice water and sodas.

In between the cake & ice cream and the bbq that was to happen later I scooted down the road to visit my aunt & grandparents. My 85 (?) year old grandfather has been having some anxiety attacks recently so I wanted to spend some time with them, even if we did just chat over the television and make fun of the spaghetti western that was showing.

Later back at the party the bbq was getting worked out in full force. And the beers came out too. That’ll beat the heat! Then the most fun part of the day (selfish) happened when my brother told me they had a Wii! You mean we were outside in the heat all day and we could have been inside in the aircon Wiiing? We played with Mario Kart (they had several steering wheels) and some bowling with the kids. They had a bunch of other games, too, I hear the tennis is really fun. I think I need to plan a Wiikend to go down there and overload on all the video games.