Standing rule in my house... "get the fuck out of my kitchen until dinner is done and you're doing dishes." Until then, it's a 1 person kitchen.
Happy TG all y'all! I hope you all enjoy your time off, and come back with a few dysfunctional family stories that we can point and laugh at.
We stayed home this year, just me, my wife & 2 kids. Wife decided she still wanted to do a full Thanksgiving meal...20lbs turkey, dressing & all the fixings. She's normally a pretty good when cooking a turkey & thought it was done, but oddly an hour sooner than expected...I started to carve it and it was clearly still raw..it's currently back in the oven...we're expecting a very dry bird this year.
We've been doing this for years, staying home, cooking a massive bird and all the sides just me and wife and kid. We loved it every year, and eat awesome leftovers for days. This year, however, we went my great aunt's house because she said it would be the last Thanksgiving she would be able to host because of her age. I barely made it home, I was so full and sleepy on the drive back. I had to stop about every half hour to kinda shake off the sleepiness. I want one of those vans that people live in down by the river, just so I can drive it to holiday feasts and take a nap in a parking lot 30 minutes after beginning the drive home.
My wife wanted to have her parents down for Thanksgiving and let them relax and enjoy instead of hosting and all that comes with it. So them and my brother in law were here for the day. It was really nice, but man, what a lot of work. My wife cooked and baked all day yesterday and today. I helped where I could but I had a gig last night so today I played sous chef and dishwasher. After dinner we visited and then watched football for a while before they left. Now we’re all just laying around relaxing. A good day over all. And my in-laws? They’re going ahead and cooking dinner for the rest of the family on Saturday anyway.
We usually go back to where I grew up to visit with family, but this year I'm leaving on Monday for a work trip, so we went up last weekend. The bonus was avoiding all the holiday traffic. It was probably for the best as we woke up to the 2yr old vomiting at 3:30am Wednesday morning and the 5yr old with really bad diarrhea. They're both feeling much better already, but we avoided having to cancel a trip. The turkey came out fine, although since it had cooled, it took an additional 2hrs. My wife thinks it hadn't fully thawed and that's why it wasn't fully cooked despite checking the temp in several places.
What does it say about me that I am nostalgic for the Black Fridays of yore when people trampled each other to save 5 bucks on a toaster?
Yeah it just isn’t the same anymore. Not that we ever took part in that nonsense, but I do miss the big thick newspaper that they’d put out on Thanksgiving Day chock full of all the ads. We’d look through them and think, “Hey there’s a good deal but still not worth the hassle.”
I know some people were wondering if Nerds was alright. Just heard from him, and he’s fine. Sounds like the election made him pull back from the internet for a while, so he’s just taking a bit if a break.
I remember when it was just called ”The Day After Thanksgiving Sale”. My one experience was back in 98 my mom and I went out at like 5am, saw all the lines and the madness, turned the car around and went to breakfast.
Back when Black Friday was just starting to become the madhouse we now know, I worked in an anchor store in a local mall. After three years of working Black Friday and seeing the mayhem I was put off it permanently. I’ve never joined the crowds or gotten up early to wait on line. The closest I’ve come is occasionally, like yesterday, going to dinner with my wife and then going shopping around 7 or 8 at night. We did that yesterday, all of the crowds were gone, and we saved an amazing amount of money on some house related things we wanted.
I had a great Thanksgiving. It was a relaxing day and I actually sat in the tub and took a bath. I'm not sure the last time I got to do that. Did anyone trample a guy on Friday? I got some stuff on sale online but not anything major. A cart for my festival goods, an automatic coop door. You know, all that fancy shit. I'm sitting at another holiday bazaar right now. It's my best event of the year. Huzzah!