Thanksgiving 2011

This Thanksgiving for the first time in 5 years Emily and I didn't have any out-of-town plans for the holiday.  Instead we were invited, along with Scott and Danielle, over to our good friends the Cooper's for what turned out to be an incredible holiday feast.  I had a pretty crappy day at work on Wednesday trying to finish up some work so I wouldn't have to go into the office over the long holiday weekend.  By the time I got home it was almost 8pm so Emily and I spent the rest of night baking some things (my first easy harvard beats, death by chocolate, sweet potatoes, etc) and relaxing before the big next day. 



On Thursday we got up early so that we could get over to Colins to start drinking and watching football.  Yes, football on the West Coast starts at 10am on holidays.  We brought over a bottle of Wild Turkey American Honey but I decided to hit the bottle of Bailey's we brought first.  Before I knew it I had nearly polished off the bottle just a few hours later.  Colin and Amanda were wonderful hosts and Colin did a spectacular job with the friggin' huge 20lb turkey he had bought knowing that left-overs are always amazing.  The girls spent a good part of the early afternoon on Amanda's computer looking at shoes and boots and other upcoming Black Friday deals.

Danielle felt suddenly sick in the afternoon while Scott found himself dozing in and out of sleep in the warm house throughout the afternoon.  I enjoyed the massage chair as usual and by the time 5 or 6 rolled around for dinner we were all pretty lit from an afternoon of great beverages.  Danielle had come down from upstairs after resting and seemed to feel better as well.  When we had put out all the food onto the table for dinner it quickly became apparent that we had all really overdone ourselves.  There was enough food for an army!  We all stuffed ourselves and by the time we were done the Turkey looked ravished and no more than 10% of each dish had been eaten (yes, we had that much food!).  

We all went into the living room, clearly suffering from instant turkey food coma, and settled in for the movie "Super 8" on blu-ray that I had brought over to test Colin's new PS3 and surround sound system in the living room.  Both the movie and Colin's stereo definitely lived up to the hype.  I thought a plane was landing on me during one loud scene in the movie of a train crash.  Scott and Emily dozed in and out of sleep but the rest of us caught the whole film and really enjoyed it.  During the movie we also finally found some room to snack on deserts as well.  By the time the movie was over it was midnight, 14 hours after we started drinking and time to go home.  We helped clean up as much as possible but Emily suddenly felt really sick (wine on top of milky foods and stuff I think) so we hastily left and felt bad about it.  Although we had stayed in town it was really a great holiday with some of our closest friends here.


The rest of the long weekend was spent pretty much relaxing.  We needed Friday to recoup at home during rainy weather anyway after Thursday's feast and Saturday a bunch of people stopped by our place to watch the Beavers get their asses handed to them by the Ducks at the Civil War game in Eugene.  On Sunday Emily and I joined Chris for a very late season ride at Black Rock in Falls City where we met up with Chris' childhood friend Jake who had moved back to the area.  Despite there being a lot of trees down over the road on the way up and my "money-pit" bike falling apart on the way up it was great riding and felt good to get out for at least one activity over the weekend.  Work tomorrow is going to suck but at least I feel pretty rested and rejuvenated now!