thanksgiving and nerd-dom
thanksgiving still remains my most favorite and sought for holiday of the year. i love thanksgiving. i love the food; i love the company; i love the weather that accompanies the day. i also love that gifts are not part of the equation to having a good time. i've always felt that thanksgiving was a relaxed version of christmas. no gift-giving obligations, just a day to spend with family and friends and eat yummy food that warms the home and the heart. this year was spent at my mom's house. we had a nice small group of my parent's next-door neighbors, marshall and i, and my sister. there was lots of yummy appetizers, including my mom's neighbor's pumpkin fondue (cheesy and bread-y stew served in a small, hollowed-out pumpkin, served warm and gooey), a cheese dip in the shape of a turkey (including cracker and pecan feathers) and my grandma's dip (prepared by me) and veggies. dinner was a traditional thanksgiving meal with all the trimmings. like every year, my dad bbq'ed the turkey and it was delicious. the potatoes were prepared the neighbors and were decadent with eggs added with the milk and butter to make for a custardy mash. we had sauteed green beans with chanterelles and shiitake mushrooms. instead of roasted sweet potatoes/yams, i wanted to try out a recipe my coworker had found: sweet potato pie with blue cheese and a bacon lattice. it looked great and the preparation was rather easy. the end product was okay. everyone agreed that it was too sweet and i looked at the recipe and could easily see where i could cut the sugar and use more sweet potato. the bacon lattice was great, although it could've stood a little longer in the oven. i think i'll give it another shot, just to see if i can make it better. my mom made 2 pies for dessert: sweet potato/pecan and apple. everything was delicious and the company was wonderful. my dad kept the wine pouring all night and conversation came easily. overall a wonderful and relaxing holiday. :)
oh right, marshall and i started the thanksgiving holiday with the silicon valley turkey trot. we signed up for the 5k run/walk, which started at 8:15am. the morning was quite chilly, but perfect for running, in my opinion. unfortunately, i tweaked my left calf on, what was supposed to be, my easy run tuesday morning. i ran two miles and did something to my calf and was left with a very sore and very tight muscle. even though i iced and compressed it all day wednesday, it was still bothering me thursday morning. i persevered and started the 5k run strong, but petered out about half-way through. i had to stop and walk. i started running again and then stopped to walk once more. it was so frustrating because the rest of my body was just getting warmed up and i wasn't tired or anything, but my leg was killing me. i ended strong; gathering my strength to run the last quarter mile. my time wasn't that great, but at least i finished and i finished running, instead of walking. after the run, marshall and i walked through the vendor tents and came away with a few samples of granola, energy "chews", and a few packets of gatorade-like drink powder. we also got a few coupons for sports basement, which will definitely get put to use. we headed home after picking up our t-shirts and relaxed the rest of the morning until we left for my mom's in the afternoon. i wouldn't mind doing it again next year and hopefully i'll be stronger so injuries like the one i had can be avoided.
+_+_+
marshall and i braved the crowds on black friday. marshall had been scouting the ads for a deal on a new monitor. we went to fry's and he found one he liked. it was a good deal and he walked away with a very nice 24" widescreen monitor. sadly, i did not come away with much on black friday. originally, i was thinking of getting a netbook to replace my dell brand paperweight. i thought i could find a deal on one, but there weren't any below $300. at that price, i might as well just go for a new laptop, but i don't have the money for a new laptop right now, so that idea was abandoned. instead, i inherited marshall's "old" monitor and set up a dual monitor display and opted to leave my laptop in its bag and start doing all my work on the desktop. i didn't walk away from shopping completely empty-handed. we found a copy of microsoft office 2010 home/student for only $90, which is $50-off the original price. both marshall and i have been surviving on office 2000, which i've held onto since high school. the software came with support for 3 machines, which is perfect for our household. it was nice finally being up-to-date with that kind of software. we also managed to bang out a few christmas gifts on our shopping trip. we ended the day crossing off my brother-in-law, my mom, and nicole/jesse. quite satisfying, if i may say so myself.
+_+_+
the rest of the weekend was very chill. nicole and jesse joined The Breakfast Club on saturday, which was great. it's always nice to have new faces around the table. don't know if they'll become regulars, but the invitation is open and they're always welcome. marshall and i both spent our saturdays cleaning our desks and prepping our "new" workstations. we agreed that with my new dual monitor display that i won the award for biggest nerd. :P i also spent most of saturday cleaning up my itunes library. a lot of my compilation CDs were being split up into individual song/albums, instead of multiple songs within an album. i was getting tired of flipping through the list of albums on my ipod and not being able to fully play through one. i managed to figure out how to do that and that made me happy. i also grabbed more album artwork to help "colorize" my collection. i also re-checked all my holiday music and get it on my ipod. i'm all set to start listening to christmas music on 12/1. even though thanksgiving has passed, i still would like to respect the holiday and wait until the end of november to really grasp the christmas spirit with both hands.
marshall and i managed to skate through season 5 of bones pretty quickly last week and through the weekend. while i don't think i'll be able to watch the first couple of episodes from the new season on hulu, at least i can start watching others without feeling too behind. we also watched catfish saturday night. i can't say too much about it without really giving the whole story away, but it is a documentary-style film about the world of social networking. i think that's all i can say. it's a thriller-type movie, but it's not a horror flick. it raises questions at the end and really fosters conversation. i enjoyed it and i'm glad i saw it.
yesterday was spent running errands and preparing for the week ahead. i put off doing school work until the latest possible time in the evening. i watched toy story 3 and after dinner marshall and i watched the new episode of the walking dead. i'm still enjoying the show, even though it is apparently deviating from the original books (marshall tells me). next week is the last episode of the season and i'll be really interested to see where it goes and how it ends up being once it starts a full "real" season.
+_+_+
i'm thoroughly grateful for a slow monday. even though there were 80+ emails in my inbox this morning, things have been slow and not demanding, which is wonderful after being on vacation for 4.5 days. well, time for lunch!
oh right, marshall and i started the thanksgiving holiday with the silicon valley turkey trot. we signed up for the 5k run/walk, which started at 8:15am. the morning was quite chilly, but perfect for running, in my opinion. unfortunately, i tweaked my left calf on, what was supposed to be, my easy run tuesday morning. i ran two miles and did something to my calf and was left with a very sore and very tight muscle. even though i iced and compressed it all day wednesday, it was still bothering me thursday morning. i persevered and started the 5k run strong, but petered out about half-way through. i had to stop and walk. i started running again and then stopped to walk once more. it was so frustrating because the rest of my body was just getting warmed up and i wasn't tired or anything, but my leg was killing me. i ended strong; gathering my strength to run the last quarter mile. my time wasn't that great, but at least i finished and i finished running, instead of walking. after the run, marshall and i walked through the vendor tents and came away with a few samples of granola, energy "chews", and a few packets of gatorade-like drink powder. we also got a few coupons for sports basement, which will definitely get put to use. we headed home after picking up our t-shirts and relaxed the rest of the morning until we left for my mom's in the afternoon. i wouldn't mind doing it again next year and hopefully i'll be stronger so injuries like the one i had can be avoided.
+_+_+
marshall and i braved the crowds on black friday. marshall had been scouting the ads for a deal on a new monitor. we went to fry's and he found one he liked. it was a good deal and he walked away with a very nice 24" widescreen monitor. sadly, i did not come away with much on black friday. originally, i was thinking of getting a netbook to replace my dell brand paperweight. i thought i could find a deal on one, but there weren't any below $300. at that price, i might as well just go for a new laptop, but i don't have the money for a new laptop right now, so that idea was abandoned. instead, i inherited marshall's "old" monitor and set up a dual monitor display and opted to leave my laptop in its bag and start doing all my work on the desktop. i didn't walk away from shopping completely empty-handed. we found a copy of microsoft office 2010 home/student for only $90, which is $50-off the original price. both marshall and i have been surviving on office 2000, which i've held onto since high school. the software came with support for 3 machines, which is perfect for our household. it was nice finally being up-to-date with that kind of software. we also managed to bang out a few christmas gifts on our shopping trip. we ended the day crossing off my brother-in-law, my mom, and nicole/jesse. quite satisfying, if i may say so myself.
+_+_+
the rest of the weekend was very chill. nicole and jesse joined The Breakfast Club on saturday, which was great. it's always nice to have new faces around the table. don't know if they'll become regulars, but the invitation is open and they're always welcome. marshall and i both spent our saturdays cleaning our desks and prepping our "new" workstations. we agreed that with my new dual monitor display that i won the award for biggest nerd. :P i also spent most of saturday cleaning up my itunes library. a lot of my compilation CDs were being split up into individual song/albums, instead of multiple songs within an album. i was getting tired of flipping through the list of albums on my ipod and not being able to fully play through one. i managed to figure out how to do that and that made me happy. i also grabbed more album artwork to help "colorize" my collection. i also re-checked all my holiday music and get it on my ipod. i'm all set to start listening to christmas music on 12/1. even though thanksgiving has passed, i still would like to respect the holiday and wait until the end of november to really grasp the christmas spirit with both hands.
marshall and i managed to skate through season 5 of bones pretty quickly last week and through the weekend. while i don't think i'll be able to watch the first couple of episodes from the new season on hulu, at least i can start watching others without feeling too behind. we also watched catfish saturday night. i can't say too much about it without really giving the whole story away, but it is a documentary-style film about the world of social networking. i think that's all i can say. it's a thriller-type movie, but it's not a horror flick. it raises questions at the end and really fosters conversation. i enjoyed it and i'm glad i saw it.
yesterday was spent running errands and preparing for the week ahead. i put off doing school work until the latest possible time in the evening. i watched toy story 3 and after dinner marshall and i watched the new episode of the walking dead. i'm still enjoying the show, even though it is apparently deviating from the original books (marshall tells me). next week is the last episode of the season and i'll be really interested to see where it goes and how it ends up being once it starts a full "real" season.
+_+_+
i'm thoroughly grateful for a slow monday. even though there were 80+ emails in my inbox this morning, things have been slow and not demanding, which is wonderful after being on vacation for 4.5 days. well, time for lunch!