Thanksgiving.

After making three loaves of buttermilk bread for our various festivities on Wednesday night, I went out to see an old friend I rarely get to see these days. I rarely get to see him because he lives in restaurant New York ... where night is day and day is night. In any case, it was good to see him, despite being incredibly exhausted when I woke up the next morning for my first New York Thanksgiving.

First, we went to a pot luck with a rather eclectic group, where for the first time in my life people actually gave me business cards. It was a pretty good time with a copious amount of food and nice people. The bread received a rather warm reception and the conversation flowed pretty easily given that some people there were aspiring Broadway stars, some MBA's and quants, some lonely churchgoers with nowhere else to be and well ... me. All of us crammed into a somewhat warm New York apartment and ate well more than is humanly natural.

Second, we went over to have dinner with some old friends, their parents, their 2 year old son, as well as their son's playground friend and his family. My friends were cooking so much food they had commandeered the stove in a common room of their building to assist in the preparations. Now, ideally, this meal would have started at 4, putting us home right at 6:30 or so when I expected my friends from LA to arrive at our apartment after their transcontinental flight. However, this was not to be. Everyone ran a bit late but fortuitously my friends and their family had prepared SO much food, my friends were able to come from the airport and join us for a Thanksgiving meal. The turkey was perfectly cooked (though the hosts declared it too dry), the sweet potatoes were marshmallow free and delicious, there were homemade cinnamon biscuits, crisp green beans and fresh, tart, homemade cranberry sauce. This delicious meal was then capped off by the presentation of the largest apple pie I have ever seen in my life. It was big enough to feed an army. Even though everyone had a fairly large piece, less than half of it was gone. All this delicious food was enjoyed while the kids chased each other around, played with Mindy, made music and tried on fireman outfits to the general delight of parents, grandparents and guests alike. It was a great meal, but we were all exhausted and before it was too late grabbed a cab home for the four of us ... plus Mindy of course.

Upon arriving home our friends surprised us with a new version of Scene-It, which we gladly cracked open and played several rounds of while our stomachs began to slowly forgive us (or at least I felt this way) for the day of overindulgence. It was a lot of fun and my personal record was 5-1 for the night. Though sadly I felt I had no real astonishing answers or flashes of brilliant, insightful recall. I pretty much got lucky. But, I will take it as this morning I am not nearly as lucky, since I am sitting in my office waiting for a collaborator to be free in order to discuss a project we need to have submitted within a week or two. I hate abandoning my friends for a morning, but this does need to get done so hopefully it will pay off in the end. In any case, he is about to be free, so I should wrap up. In any case, that was Thanksgiving for me this year.