shaver

I have a lot to be thankful for, which is probably why I took both turkey-barrels right in the stomach this past weekend. Totally irresponsible levels of poultry consumption are a hallmark of my harvest-celebration history, though, so it’s not like I couldn’t have seen it coming.

When Tyla and I arrived in Ottawa on Saturday, we discovered that Martha was, along with three classmates, preparing a Thanksgiving meal for that evening. Reckless, perhaps, given that we three could see the Holmes/Schueneman Family Feast on the horizon, but I was in no position to object. Tyla’s Sangria stylings were a hit, and the meal — well, let me just say that the mashed-and-baked potatoes included both sour cream and cream cheese in the ingredient list, and leave the rest to your imaginations.

Once we could barely stand, Tyla and I zipped off to Anatole and Miriam’s housewarming. I cannot but offer the most hearty endorsement of “their lovely apartment”:http://neon.polkaroo.net/~papadop/apartment.html, and their hospitality is, of course, top-notch. We had a better data point than usual with respect to their kindness and hosting prowess, for Hilary’s amazing wine-throwing powers resulted in quite a few people needing to borrow pants and the like from Anatole’s closet. Happily, I just had to wash my shirt; nobody really wants to see me in Anatole-sized jeans. Amos has a cute Mac laptop, and I’m entering that fiscally-dangerous portion of my depression cycle, but I think I can hold my ground. Think. Madhava’s birthday gift was chipped, so we had to return it the next morning and then hustle it to his parents’ place before we took off to Eric’s farm.

Eric’s friend Lorri’s mother and daughter were involved in a car accident on the way to Eric’s (from Kingston), but neither of them were seriously hurt. (Given that it was a 3-car head-on-head-on-head accident with most cars at 90kph or so, it’s barely short of miraculous that none of the participants were injured in a major way.) We had a bit of a scare when Lisa (Lorri’s mother) had a fainting spell after dinner, but it proved to be nothing more than the triple threat of stress, codeine, and low blood sugar.

Also in attendance were my mother and two of her friends, Larissa and Chris. Larissa was once an exchange-guest in the home of “Michael Johnson”:http://people.redhat.com/johnsonm/, with whom I have had no small number of fascinatingly geeky conversations over the past decade. The world felt as small as my belt, I tell you.

Back late Monday night, after a relaxing celebration of Tyla’s birthday in the morning, a nice dinner with Mom at the Grizzly Grill in the evening, and then early to bed; Tyla had a big day ahead of her today, what with the librarianing and suchlike.