Thanksgiving 2018

It's that time again . . . for holiday photo album count analysis! First, a couple of links: Full photo album for Thanksgiving Day can be found here. But for some comparative context you can also click here for my full history of albums dedicated to Thanksgiving Day -- 22 photo albums spanning 26 years. (Since 1993, the only years I did not take any photos on Thanksgiving Day were 1994, 1999, 2000 and 2002. For a couple of those years I do have home video clips.) As far as the volume of photos goes, though, this year's album of 33 shots is kind of misleading, because it includes 7 shots from the Vegetarians of Washington 18th Annual [though our first] Vegetarian Pre-Thanksgiving Feast on Wednesday last week. If you disregard those, you're left with 26 shots actually taken yesterday itself -- which matches exactly the number of shots in my 2017 Thanksgiving photo album, and nearly perfectly matches the average I've had (26.3) of photos for Thanksgiving Day the past three years. Thanksgiving has never been hugely photogenic, of course, as it's just a day people get together and eat a big meal. So there's lots of pictures of food. At Gina and Beth's, there's some pictures of Christmas decorations. You'll see them as DLU photos soon enough. I did just finish captioning them all this morning, though. So if you're that interested, you can read those details on Flickr. It was all very similar to last year, as it was our second year going to Gina and Beth's, albeit with four fewer people, going down from 9 to 5. Their foreign exchange student, Gaia, was not around this year; nor were three other friends who had other places to go this year. In fact, had Shobhit and I not come this year, Gina and Beth's one and only Thanksgiving dinner guest would have been their friend Jim. Whether or not this will be repeated a third time is rather iffy. I had actually rather hoped we could fly to Palm Springs to spend Thanksgiving with Faith this year, but after a bit of radio silence between them in the wake of a somewhat tense text exchange a few months ago, that didn't happen. Shobhit had me text her on his phone while he was driving, though, just a simple "Happy Thanksgiving," and that got the dialogue going again. She later expressed disappointment that we had not come down, and Shobhit basically said, "Maybe next year." One can only hope -- although even that's a moderately dubious proposition, as being in addition to already potentially three trips next year that I'll need to fly to: visiting Sara in Denver; accompanying Danielle to a wedding in upstate New York; and also traveling with Danielle another time to Las Vegas. But, we'll see. I really miss my visits to Palm Springs and would quite like to go again. In any case, it was a very nice day yesterday. We got up relatively early; Shobhit wrapped dough around his potato filling while I took my shower and got ready; and it was around 9:00 when we set to deep frying the 12 samosas we took to Olympia. This left us plenty of time to leave with a good ETA around 11 a.m., which was when Beth suggested we arrive. We had a lot of things to bring and we remembered all but one of them. Shobhit was right that we should have made a list -- because it was kind of a key thing we forgot to take: the Field Roast Celebration Roast, which would have been our vegetarian direct substitute to turkey. But, it wasn't the end of the world. As I said when we got there, Shobhit's samosas are very filling. In the end, eight of them got eaten: the final four were boxed up by Gina for leftovers. Speaking of leftovers, I finally brought back the plastic container Gina sent us home with last year on Thanksgiving. "I was wondering where this was!" Gina joked. Thinking ahead, we actually brought our own containers this time -- four of them, and we filled them all: stuffing; mashed potatoes; green bean casserole; "cranberry fluff," which I had none of yesterday but it was cranberry, and Shobhit did want to try it even though he never dished any for himself yesterday either. Anyway this should all make for a nice leftovers dinner tonight -- maybe even with Celebration Roast! We also brought our Travel Yahtzee, because Gina suggested we play games this year, and we played three games of that, starting when we all go our desserts. That actually was effective at livening up the late afternoon and early evening, actually, resulting in Shobhit not suggesting we leave until a bit later than I expected. The drive home was pretty smooth; it was just before 6:00 when we left, and it was 7:00 on the dot when we pulled into our parking space at home. So now it's a typically quiet Black Friday at work -- neither Scott nor Noah are in today. Actually a surprising lot of other people in Merchandising came in, but I'm all alone here in Grocery. I'm down with that, though. I had leftover samosas for lunch, having taken three of the 20 more Shobhit made after getting back home last night -- he brought the rest to share with his coworkers. He had a super-early shift starting at 4:30 today, which thus ends at 1 pm. He'll make still more samosas after getting home, to bring and share with his cousins who we should be seeing at the Lighting of the Tree Ceremony at Westlake Center this evening. Their cousin Anubhab is visiting again, and we'll be seeing him -- and probably tomorrow too, as Shobhit has volunteered to take him to some natural sightseeing. Apparently Anubhab first suggested Mt. Rainier, which I would have been cool with, except it's likely to be too cloudy to see the mountain. Shobhit is now pushing for a day trip up to Whidbey Island. So we'll see. [posted 12:18 pm]