Thankgiving in Review!

Got up relatively early, and lurched downstairs to see what was going on. After a bit of fussing around, went back up to take a shower with Margie and plan out the day.

First off was my contribution to the impending feast, pecan pie. I get to cook so rarely, it’s nice to have a part in it. Katherine helped with the pouring and mixing and all, and the pies went in and out on schedule. (Despite that, I wasn’t altogether pleased — they tasted a scosh burned. 🙁 )

While we were working on the pie, someone had turned on the Macy’s Thankgiving Day Parade. I don’t know that I’ve ever watched that particular extravaganza before, but I will certainly in the future refrain from commenting about the over-commercialism of the Rose Parade. Really, the MTDP was a non-stop advertisement for current Broadway shows, cartoons, various pop singers, etc. I’m sure the balloons are incredibly cool in person, but … won’t be high on my list next year.

Then Jim and I started tackling some of the guest room work. Job of the day was screwing around with electrical — raising the outlet by the closet (to be above the planned built-in night stand), running wire from there to the dimmer (for the overhead lights at the bed) and up to where the lights will be. And, over by the window, shifting an outlet a foot and a half to the right (and past a stud) to be back from behind a planned book shelf.

Jim had to go work on stuffing at that point, so I decided (since I had about a half hour free before I had to race up to shower before guests arrived) to tackle the light switches in the basement. One of them hasn’t been working, and they’re both non-Decora, so I wanted to replace them.

Yikes. The two switches wire together (for power), and the mapping of the non-Decora to Decora switches isn’t exact, and the teeny-tiny diagram doesn’t really help.

I did manage, when I flipped the power back on, to knock out a breaker at the neighbor’s house. Yow.

After another 15 minutes of pondering and poking (with the breaker for that section back off), I decided to backtrack to where I’d been, reinstalling the old switches as people were arriving. I did manage to do that correctly.

Raced upstairs to shower, and folks kept arriving, only to have someone grab the shower before me. So I just changed into some decent duds and descended.

So we had Lee and De and Rachel (Katherine and Rachel were thick as thieves the rest of the evening). Jackie and Kaylee. Doyce. Stan. And, of course, Jim and Ginger and Margie and me (and the aforementioned Katherine). A fine group.

Sat around and chatted for a while, while the oil in the frier heated up and Jim mixed daiquiris. Then cooked the main turkey (40 minutes, yay), with two others for the queue. Finally had the big dinner, complete with turkey, stuffing, green beans, potatoes au gratin (thanks, Doyce), salad, biscuits (thanks, Jackie), and, for dessert, pecan pie, pumpkin roll (thanks, Jackie), and cheese cake (thanks, De). (And if I forgot any other food contributions, my apology — I was flitting about like a hummingbird and
missed all the entrances.)

We did take a walk between dinner and dessert, which was nice (the weather was gorgeous all day), then came back and chatted for a while until folks had to head home and the Ks had to head upstairs. And even then, Stan and Margie and I chit-chatted a while longer and watched Iron Chef (“Battle Duck!”) and sipped some odd port from Grand Junction.

All in all, a very pleasant day. Hope everyone else had as good a time.

Now … to start working some of that dinner off!