28 November 2002

Good morning, and happy Thanksgiving.

I spent yesterday acting as a domestic tornado. I made bomber bars first, and then I roasted some garlic to go in the potatoes today, and then I roasted some squash for in the soup, and then I roasted red peppers for last night's quesadillas. I made the squash soup, all but the brown butter drizzle for garnish, and let me tell you, it is good. Our version isn't quite the newspaper recipe version. It has been improved. Theirs lacked brown sugar and nutmeg. I consulted with Timprov at the final stage, to good results. (Their recipe had also gone through a chinois or mesh strainer. We decided we liked the pureed texture enough that it wasn't worth pushing bits through, and I'd rather have a little bit chunkier soup than spend half an hour making it absolutely smooth.)

Last night I had holiday anticipation feeling for the first time since we've lived out here. In the past, Thanksgiving has been a pretty laid-back holiday, and when we've been here for Easter, I've been hyper about my parents' arrival and not so much about the holiday itself. But last night was pure holiday anticipation in the pit of my stomach, just like on the 23rd of December, and it was good.

I have a dozen small things I could do before we leave for Mill Valley this morning, but I don't have to do any of them. Yesterday's frenzy took care of the necessities. I got very little work done and read only a tiny bit of The Boxer Rebellion, but that's all right, because we're ready for the long weekend. (And I pause here to talk to the folks, the grands, and Onie.)

Last year on Thanksgiving I wrote about how thankful I was to still have my grandpa after his summer bout with cancer. I'm still thankful for grandpa, and I'm thankful that we didn't have anything dramatic this year to make me notice it. I'm thankful for all my family, the ones I chose and the ones I got by blood and the ones who came as a package deal. That includes some of you. And I'm thankful for my friends, including many of you. That's the important part, the people. The rest of the stuff I'm thankful for is kind of secondary. Books and Nutella and SmartWool and squash soup and all of that -- it's good stuff, but it's minor. Doesn't even make the thankful top ten.

It looks like we're on schedule to get out of here fairly early, so I'm going to try to make the last bits of clutter go away, and I'm going to do the last little things: packing up the food to take to Mill Valley, digging out the camera and Dan's flight number, picking music for on the drive, that kind of thing. Have a happy Thanksgiving, all of you.