Thanksgiving

Thursday was Thanksgiving, a day when Americans gather with their families to give thanks for being able to gather with their families and give thanks. More importantly, they also eat large amounts of food.

Jordan loves food-based holidays, so he cooked a turkey and many accompanying dishes. We had a party of 13 people, mostly his labmates. While he was cooking, I cleaned the house a little, then watched some of the Thanksgiving parade. I found it somewhat boring and didn't watch long: I later realised that I was watching the "wrong" channel (NBC has official coverage, but CBS also televises it, presumably because you can't stop people filming a huge event taking place in public in the middle of New York), but I think I just don't find parades that exciting.

Our friends arrived and we chatted and ate for many hours. We watched Thankskilling, an extremely low budget horror movie about a killer turkey. Watching bad movies seems to be a Thanksgiving tradition for Jordan: two years ago we began Zardoz, but we didn't make it far through because it really is very, very bad.

After sharing some of our most embarrassing stories, it was midnight and time to head home (which, for me, was just upstairs).

Although Friday was also a holiday, I spent it working because I have my thesis proposal coming up this week. I didn't venture near any shopping centres, which were overflowing with bargain-seeking customers (Black Friday sales are the American equivalent of Boxing Day sales).

I came home and watched the last of the battle for the Jewelled Phallic Symbol. It was good news for Patrick (and for me, since I adopt the teams of those around me when Cal is doing badly and not available on TV on this side of the country), and a trip to the national championship game for Notre Dame.