What's Not to Be Thankful For?

It was a big Thanksgiving. So big that by the time I got to blogging about it I was muddled and faded and just decided to go to bed while it was still an awesome day.

Maybe the best Thanksgiving I've ever had.



Em wanted bacon for breakfast. I'm like, we're going to be glutting ourselves in four hours at Grandpa Calvin's... But we never have bacon. As in I think it might have been February last time I fried up a pound of it. It's not that I don't love the stuff, it's that its expensive, verboten (I'm a heart attack survivor), stinks up the house, makes a mess of the stove, etc. Plus, I always want to eat it to excess.

But with Mo and Em to help consume, it's not so bad on a very occasional basis. It was 'lower sodium' if that means anything. Still salty as hell (if it wasn't, I'd have been disappointed).




Given the indecently good weather, we decided to try for a rocket launch. I wonder who launched the model rockets at the First Thanksgiving...



I bought a Snapshot, Estes' model that has a nose cone camera. It's kind of an expensive model, about $25 at Wal-Mart, compared with the $3 to $8 I usually have tied up in a rocket by the time we launch it. Cheaper rockets are easier to get over when they bermuda triangulate.



I was struck, for starters, by how dependent on digital camera's LCD displays I've become. I've all but forgotten the notion of wasted shots, it's more important to click when in doubt with a digital. With this 110 nose-cone, You have to advance the film to where the number shows in the window, pull the shutter release out, insert the nose cone in the body (which holds the button for the shutter release), open the lense cover and get ready for launch.



You'll find out if the picture turned out when you develop the film.



Oh, the uncertainty.

It comes with a 24-exposure roll, and I knew there was a zero percent chance we'd get 24 launches done without losing the rocket. But I figured we could get four or five. I launched it after several others so I had a sense of the wind, the driftage I could expect, got my launch rod weathercocked appropriately, etc.

We recovered it easily from the first launch, so I advanced the film and tried for a second shot, confident it wouldn't drift off into the distance under canopy.



The nose cone separated. We got the rocket back, if by rocket you mean everything but the nose cone, and thus the camera and film. We looked for it vainly, but it's gone.

The Great Pumpkin needs some serious repair work (I'll have to rebuild his bottom section) after a slow recovery fuse. The parachute opened about twenty feet before impact. Still, we got a lot of launches in and on the whole, they were successful.

Then we went to pig out on bird and trimmings at my Dad's.

Where my nephews were raising heck. The twins are right at the age where all childproofing measures are revealed as hoaxes. One of them even managed to break a rock (a monument type piece of decor my stepmother had on the hearth of her wood stove).



Their older brother climbed a car. He freaked out when he couldn't find a way to get down, apparently after scrambling up the hood and windshield.



I mean, Mo can climb, but damn, the top of a minivan? Of course Mo doesn't get scared when she does things like finding a way onto the top of the play equipment tubes instead of crawling through them. She leaves the fear to Dad.



Mo was getting stir-crazy even as Em was worn out enough to feign a version of the adult's post-gorge naps. So we went on a walk. Dad's house is near an excellent trail, and with weather that good, why not walk off the seven kinds of pie?



Seven, that's right. Pecan, Dixie, two kinds of Pumpkin, Sweet Potato, Mincemeat, Sweet Potato with a sweet crumbly topping. It's all about the gluttony.



Topping it off, we went to the Plaza Lighting. This is something I've never done. Well, my ex says I did once, but I don't remember it, so it must not count.



The lighting ceremony is the kind of thing I normally dismiss. Crowds, nightmare parking, etc. But I only have the honyocks every other Thanksgiving, and I'm not likely to get another shot with weather like this.



Plus, I figured, the crowds are made up of people who seem to think it's worth the hassle, so maybe check it out? If I hated it, at least I could enjoy my hatred without the taint of ignorance.


I worried that Mo wouldn't do well in the crowed, but she didn't seem bothered. I think maybe the sheer number of people and the tightness of the bodies packed in as we got closer (alas not closer enough the girls could see the stage), maybe she was able to ignore the multitude as people. They become a sort of wall on all sides from her height, I guess.



She did pat a guy on the back, a guy mabe 25 who was there with his girlfriend. He didn't seem to know what to make of it, but after watching her for a minute I think he got that whatever the cause, the pat was at least innocent.



What do you say, as a parent, in that situation? I just said she must have made a friend. Which probably classed me as being at least as weird as my spawn, so there it is.

They had a band (Kerry Strayer's Orchestra), Lisa Henry, the Wild Women (Millie Edwards, Lori Tucker, Mary Moore and Myra Taylor), etc. Mo had fun dancing to the music even if she couldn't see the band.



Larry Moore, a local Talking Head did the countdown (as usual). I didn't know to expect this, but there was fireworks after the lights came on. Timed out to that Wizard in Winter piece by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, they were quiet fireworks but they were fireworks.



It would be cooler if they made the Plaza lights dance to the tune like that dude's house.



Anyway, we did have to park a long ways away from the ceremony, but it was a nice night for walking. And we got to play in the horse fountain at Mill Creek Park. It's drained for the winter, and you can climb on the horses and whatnot.



Then, as if this day wasn't already more than I could have asked for, the Chiefs played. I've always hated Jerry Jones and the way he decided to take Detroit's Thanksgiving Day and appropriate it as a Cowboys tradition, all that America's Team bullshit, but I guess the league as figured out that we're off work and already eating and drinking too much, might as well have a football game.



A night game, which was nice. Denver, a division rival and until last night ahead of us in the AFC West. It was a thing of beauty, including Jake Plummer visibly losing his job. Reminds me of the Jeff George implosion.



Enough football nonsense. The Chiefs winning makes any day good. With a day that had so much fun and family and spectacle, it was just gravy.



This is far too long a post to expect anyone to hang with. Consider this the verbal equivalent of the gastronomic indulgence.