I have been neglecting this blog of late. Last week I was hitting the crest of the wave of all the student performances in the theatre and it was keeping me late at work in the evening and as a consequence I wasn’t getting the requisite 5 hours of sleep a night. That has now passed, and I think I better put in some effort here.

We had a very pleasant and somewhat quiet Thanksgiving. The holiday actually stretched over the better part of 5 days for some of us. Father in Law came up from New York City, as is the tradition here for the last 5 or 6 years. He arrived on Tuesday evening, as Wednesday was ‘Grandparents Day’ at the boy’s school. The school invites the grandparents to the student’s classes and has special presentations for them. The boy enjoys it, and I think he likes the surprise when they see his grandfather. Although the boy resembles his grandfather, he doesn’t have grandfathers darker Native American / African American complexion. This was the source of some embarrassment for one of his teachers, who assumed that the boys’ grandfather was connected to his seatmate who is African American. The teacher was passing out completed assignments to the students, and suggested that the boy’s grandfather should check out the seatmates work. There was a flash of realization the teachers part that he had made a bit of a faux paux, he laughed a bit smile and apologized to all involved. No offence was taken, he is a good teacher, and it was an easy mistake to make given the circumstances. Father in law had great fun in relating the story later when he and the boy returned to the house.
Grandparent’s day was a half-day event, so I took it upon myself to take the day off, and Mrs. had a short day as well. So following the festivities we decided to get the jump on Black Friday and make a purchase at Best Buy.

Some time ago Mrs. had decided that the boy needed a new computer even though he has two on his desk. One is an old iMac that he uses primarily to watch movies, and the other is a slightly aging windows machine that has become infected numerous times with malware and god knows what, and has taken far too much time and energy to be cleaned up. With this in mind Mrs decided that he needed a Mac laptop in so much as we know that Mac are great computers, and his school supplies Macbooks for the kids to use in study hall etc. Now buying a new computer is not in our budget at this time, but somehow Mrs. had talked her father into purchasing one for the boy as a Christmas gift. We did our research and found that Best Buy was having a one-day only sale and they were knocking $100 of the price. The best part was that one could order the machine online at any give store that had them in stock and pick it up later in the day. And that we did. Best Buy is always an adventure, I find it to be total sensory overload, but of the sort that is addictive. We made our primary transaction, and then wandered the store looking at all of the stuff that we would never buy but marvel at the technology. I admit that I scoped out the 5.1 channel tuner amplifiers. We have had a wide screen TV for some time that is HD compatible, and it is on my list to one day up-grade the sound system. Pant, drool, you know how is it with boys and their toys.

The big debate was whether to wait ‘til Christmas to give the computer to the boy, or give it while Grandfather was in town. When we arrived home I went upstairs to my office to put things away, and when I returned to the living room, I found the decision had been made, the box was open and the boy’s eyes were a-glow. This would be the way we would see the boys face for pretty much the rest of the weekend a-glow and facing the computer screen.

Thanksgiving day was quiet and as is the usual case. Other than FiL neither of us have family close by so the holidays are usually pretty low key. (One of the things that brought us to Boston besides jobs was the fact that Mrs.’ sister and her family loved here, unfortunately they moved after we were here for a couple years.) We had a small 9lbs turkey, and a variety of dishes that reflected the Native American culture, including the ever-popular succotash. For turkey dressing Mrs. improvised using a mix of wild, white and brown rice and dried cranberries for a very tasty concoction. My contribution was the rolls, made from scratch using potato dough. They didn’t rise as much as they should have, but they were still tasty. The day itself was pretty uneventful we didn’t remember to watch the parade, and none of us are sports fans so it wasn’t football and chip day either. We just mostly hunkered down and watched the rainfall. What is it with rain in the holidays anyhow? I have to admit that I miss the big family gatherings on Thanksgiving, although it has been many years since I have been to one. As A kid I remember gatherings on my mothers side of the family that involved all her siblings and their children. We would rent a hall and there would be upwards of 50 people or more.

In spite of the bad weather and the bad economy we have much to be thankful for this year. I am most thankful that we have elected a president who seems to want to do something for the working people of this country, and get the country back on track nationally and internationally. I feel like the last 8 years have been something of a bad dream. Hopefully the dawn is coming soon. We have a roof over our heads and good jobs and a family that loves and cares for one another, after that, the rest is gravy.

The rest of the holiday weekend passed at a pretty leisurely pace. I had vague plans of getting in some culture, like going to a museum of something, but weather and general inertia played against us, plus we couldn’t get the boy’s face out of the new computer. We did celebrate Black Friday by doing our monthly Costco run. We only splurged on a few items; the boy did manage to convince grandfather to purchase him a game for his Wii however. Come to think of it the Wii was grandfathers gift to the boy last Christmas! Maybe grandfather is becoming an enabler. Hmm. So between the Wii game and the new computer, there was almost no way to get the boy out of the house.

The boy’s friend from school did rescue us by inviting him to go to the movies on Saturday afternoon, so we did have a few hours of peace and quite with no television and no computer. I think we just blessed out on silence and privacy, grandfather having left for NY earlier in the day. Rain began to fall late Saturday night and continued unabated through the next day, which kept us pretty much hunkered down in the house all day. That isn’t a bad thing, but it doused my hopes of a getting a little ‘culture’ and I had hoped. Oh well, maybe next year.!!