Thanksgiving on the Table

 We have been trying to figure it out, and I'm pretty sure the last time we had a Thanksgiving dinner on the dining room table was in 2013. One year we went to Indiana to meet Loretta, we got invited to eat with someone else a few times. The years we were both working at the newspaper we were too tired to do anything ourselves. We went to community dinners a couple of times. Then there was Covid, and trailer prep for the hike, and the hike...

Anyway. Ta-da!

We had pork chops, and they turned out really yummy. Josh was supposed to join us, but he didn't show up. He has no minutes on his phone, so we couldn't call him. I was kicking myself that I hadn't simply said we'd pick him up. O well, he came an hour later. He had fallen asleep and didn't wake up. Then he didn't really want to do anything, so after a while he left. I refuse to get stressed about Josh. I guess he was happy, and he did get fed.

Here was my attempt to have a little fun. There is a veggie one in the link below.

And what about that pie? We managed to discipline ourselves to not eat some for breakfast. But we definitely enjoyed it for dessert. It's up to standard.

Other than the cooking and meal prep, I did not do a thing all day. It was nice and relaxing.

See Thanksgiving 2013

Low Key Day

We went to the free community dinner at Radiant Church today. Josh went with us. They were taking photos for people against a decorative backdrop. Here is ours.

This event is always very busy. I am not sure how many people they serve, but a lot. (The paper reported that between eat-in and takeout, they served 504 dinners.)

One nice perk is that there is pie for dessert.

I worked on the pantry a bit, took a walk, and that's about it. Last year, for Thanksgiving, I took a hike!

SeeThanksgiving 2022 See Thanksgiving 2021

Searching... Searching...

It was not a day that lent itself to pictures. I spent nearly the whole day looking for something, which spun off into other jobs. I neeeded an old computer file. I was afraid it was part of what I permanently lost two computers ago. And, I think it must have been.

I ended up finally backing up my old back-up drive. That's good. I've been putting that off a LONG time, and there is stuff on that drive I'd hate to lose. Instead of twiddling my thumbs, I did some other jobs while I was waiting for large files to be moved.

Most seriously, I got the porch cleaned off. I'd been puttering at it a bit, but today I finished except to put a few things away. I'll do those tomorrow. This was the repository of all the wood and miscellaneous pieces of the entire trailer project. The pile was a couple of feet high. I know it hasn't been cleared in 2 years, maybe 3.

Meanwhile, since I was moving all those old files, I went looking for something fun to share. Here's a Throwback Wednesday. Maybe I should say Throwback Thanksgiving. This is 2007. Not our kid, but a good friend, Josh S. He also joined us for T-day in 2013. Now, I'm happy to tell you, he is a husband, and a daddy to two wonderful little boys.

OK, so it's now 5 pm, and the hard drive is backed up, and I'm still determined to find that file. There was one other option where I might have the text from it. BINGO!

Perfect... and it's something I needed for the Vacation from DMS book. It probably would have taken me less time to look it up all over again. However, I wouldn't have backed up that drive or finished the porch. So, I guess it was a meaningful search.

See Thanksgiving 2013

Thanksgiving Decor

I was very happy to see that one family, at least, did not feel the need to jump directly to Christmas. Genuine Thanksgiving decorations!

I looked back through the blog, and I can hardly believe I've never shown you my little Thanksgiving decoration set. I love this village scene, purchased long ago, maybe around 1994 or 1995, for more money than I usually spend on that sort of thing. But I've never regretted it because I like it so much.

Re- displaying decorations, I wasn't even home last year, and the year before that the house was covered with preparations for the hike. So I'm not sure when I last got it out. Yes, the Indians have the wrong kind of dwelling, blah, blah... it's symbolic of the different cultures coming together.

I walked to town this afternoon and the light on this spirea bush was fantastic!

I managed to fill the entire day with stuff, although it doesn't seem like much. I'm formatting a book for someone, I did errands, I spent a little time cleaning, and mailed a pile of things.

I spent way longer than seems reasonable researching one little thing for Vacation from DMS, and managed to write just a little bit. It's now at 10,812 words.

See Breaking the Rules

Breaking the Rules

  We had a non-traditional Thanksgiving today, and that was just fine. The trailer table is still on sawhorses in the kitchen and it made a lovely table. We had dinners delivered by Radiant Church. We got an apple pie from the Reformed Church and a pumpkin pie from Meijer. Omer bought a large tub of "super-food salad" from Meijer for me. It was perfect. Joshua joined us for the meal.

After that we had a Skype call with Steve. Can you believe I didn't hit print screen? Bummer. But we had a nice chat with him. He hasn't been here for 2 years. And he doesn't like to talk, so this was a real treat.

We also ended up having a discussion of how often we "break the rules" for Thanksgiving. Thanks to the blog, I was able to look back on a lot of years. Just for the record, last year I did cook. We have done take-out a couple of times. It looks like the last year I cleaned the dining room and fixed a classic turkey was 2013. That's OK too. I did fix a turkey for Christmas dinner at the newspaper one of the years I worked there.

I do get to cross off a big item. The last time Steve was here, he requested that I make him some cloth shopping bags. Procrastinator that I am, they are just getting done. I wanted to ask him one question before finishing them, and I did that during our call. Now there are 2 of these, ready to send. I suppose I shouldn't cross it off until they are in the mail, but I can add "mail the bags" to the list of small items.

And I get to have pie for breakfast again tomorrow. We "broke the rules" this morning and cut the pies before the main meal so we could have pie for breakfast today too! After all... who made the rule that you can't eat the pie early? (Probably I did, back when it would have been completely gone before the real meal.)

In other news: I worked on that final difficult project in the trailer a little bit, but mostly I sewed. Steve's bags were a BIG ITEM, and I did one other small one. 14 BIG ITEMS to complete or drop (48 done). Tons of small ones to do (59 done). 5 days to go.

Now, it's back to the sewing machine for me.

See Thanksgiving Threesome

Thanksgiving Threesome

  Joshua came over to eat with us today. We were going to go out because it's so hard to fix things that all of us will/can eat. But the restaurants are shut down again, so we managed to come up with a menu that I like all of, and Omer and Josh like most of. We had lemon-rosemary chicken (on the stove), rice, buttenut squash, salad, and the pies.

Because of the aforementioned house Tetris, there is no place available to eat. So we set up an extra little table. Worked fine!

After the food settled a bit, I went on a walk. Just a road walk, but I decided to challenge myself. I was doing a 7-mile loop, and I wanted to see how fast I could do it. Kept a 4 mph pace for the first two miles (my casual pace is 3 mph), but I couldn't quite keep that up. My overall pace was 3.74 mph. Not too shabby. And, it's never a race on a real hike. But I figure if I push myself when it's easy, then I'm in better shape for when it's not.

The sky was mostly gray, with a temperature of 43 when I left the house. Light breeze. Nice walking weather. No spectacular pictures. I was concentrating on walking fast. There were rays coming from the spot of light in this cloud, but the camera didn't catch them.

In other news: There is no other news. I cooked and cleaned up and played my game.

See Dinnerpieme

Loss and Gain

 
After I posted the pictures from the summer of 1949, a friend got back to me that same night with an obituary for my nephew, Frederic S. Leary, Ricky. Well, that was fairly astonishing since I'd been trying to locate him on line for several years, with no luck. I don't think I'm an ineffective researcher... anyway. It was real, and Ricky is gone too soon, from cancer.

However, as a result of that obit, I was able to find my nieces, his two sisters, Jo-Anne and Susanne. We've re-connected, and although we hardly know each other, it's pretty exciting.

So, I went hunting for any pictures I might have of them. How about the summer of 1956? It could be 1957, but I'm wearing glasses, so the choice of years is limited. This is me on the left, Ricky center, and Jo-Anne on the right. It's taken at their house in Massachusetts.



Here's their family. This one's fuzzier, but it's what I have. Jo-Anne left, Ethel next, Brother John (that's what I always called him), and Ricky on the right.



I have one more picture of us, but poor Susanne gets left out again (she wasn't born yet in the first set). Well, most of her is left out, anyway. Their family came to spend Thanksgiving with us, and I think it was in 1963, although it might have been 1964. Interestingly enough, there's my buddy Marie in the back as well. (It's a real mystery how she got permission to visit me on a holiday!) This picture is in the house I grew up in, the one my dad's father built.

From left to right: Jo-Anne, Ricky, John, Marie (standing), my mom and dad (who is grandfather to John's children), Ethel, and part of Susanne. Oh, how I wish I had taken more pictures. We were so conscious of how much the film and developing cost.



And that's the last time I saw any of their family except John. I'm looking forward to getting to know the girls. I really can't say, "again," since I barely knew them back then. Ricky and I were closer in age, and were better friends, just because age makes such a big difference when you are children. Now the few years between us hardly matters.

Maybe some day there will be a current picture of those of us who remain.

In other news: I wrote in the morning, and worked on a web site all afternoon. I'm ready to get my face out of the computer.

	See Summer Fashion 1949
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Low Key Thanksgiving Works for Us

 
Well, I have managed to take my turn with the cold that's going around work. I've done almost nothing today. Took a nap. Cooked one thing (that was the plan anyway). Wrote a little tiny bit and worked on the print book cover for Dead Mule Swamp Druggist.

With no one to have to impress or make happy other than the two of us, Omer brought home some turkey from a local restaurant and I made baked macaroni and cheese, for which I've been hankering.



I'm going to rearrange a few things in the living room because Om wants to put up the Christmas tree this weekend. Then it's probably back to bed. The Friday/ Friday night schedule starts again at 9 tomorrow morning and I'm sure I'll be going to work no matter how I feel. Just hope the nose will have stopped leaking non-stop by then.

We did get a phone call from Phil and Nan. They are good friends who moved to Oregon some years ago. They were Maggie's previous owners. Little Suzanne (granddaughter), who always thought Maggie was still her dog even though she lived with me, turned 21 today. Wow. It was nice to get caught up.

When I was hunting up links to add below, I see that we did something similar in 2015, and the newspaper rat race was mentioned. We had all worked even more hours that week, and I was exhausted. I mention this only because there were more inserts this year, but we didn't experience as much stress this time. Things are more organized and better planned so that although it was a challenge, we weren't all just run ragged. This is a good thing.

	See A Similar T-day in 2015 See Thanksgiving 2014- the last time we did anything really special on this day.
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Weird and Wonderful

 
Yes, it's Thanksgiving. I'm just ending the longest run without blogging except perhaps when I was off hiking. Here's why.

The newspapers and shopper editions with the flyers for all the Black Friday and pre-Christmas sales are the largest of the entire year. I've just worked eight days in a row with a total of more than 60 hours. For that, I am truly thankful! But I'm also whipped. Everyone who worked on that project is; it's not just because I'm old (so they all assure me- and they look bushed, too).

So, when Omer asked what we were going to do for Turkey Day, I said, "I am going to be too tired to care. Surprise me." So he did.



He got House of Flavors fresh roasted turkey (if you are local, you know that is GOOD), pie from Big Boy, and several kinds of deli salads. The kale one is especially good. He made the cranberry relish himself.

It was perfect. I didn't do a thing except open a few containers. I've been in my pjs all day. We ate when we wanted to. It was quiet. I am happy. (PS- I go to work at 8am tomorrow again!)

Thanks, Om!

	See Thanksgiving 2011
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There's a Place Called Kokomo

 
And it's in the middle of Indiana. City of an auto accident I was once in. City today of Thanksgiving dinner.



They had a bunch of small murals of the local area. The train station was one of them. We ate at the Windmill Restaurant. If you're also ever in Kokomo, I recommend it. The food was delicious and it didn't cost an arm and a leg.



Loretta got caught in a huge detour around Louisville, so we warmed a booth and had hot drinks for over an hour waiting for her, and they were nice to us anyway. Then we ordered awesome dinners. I had pork chops, Loretta had steak and shrimp and Omer just had steak without the icky little crustaceans.



Now this is a realistic Indiana mural. Flat and corn.

We also saw some genuine Indiana history. This round barn is now part of the Fulton County Museum. That would be a fun place to go back to for a visit. Looked like they had quite a few interesting things to look at.



Home safe and sound (oh yes, with new windshield wipers for the day's excitement), and now I'm getting ready to go to work for the night.

	See Interesting Barns
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Thanksgiving 2013

 
We really did Turkey Day this year. If you are going to do it, do it big, right?

Yesterday, we had a surprise gift of flowers delivered to our door. They were from Dave & Loren, who joined us for the meal today. I had a basket that seemed to fit the selection. Here's how that turned out.



I also tried my hand at something fun I saw on the internet. Wish I could take credit for thinking it up, but I'm not too proud to copy a good idea.



At the other end of the table... the serious turkey.



The people who joined us are all familiar faces on this blog. Our friend Josh, son Josh, Om, Loren & Dave (from the trail club), and Loretta. It was a pretty good mix of people and there was some lively conversation.



After we ate ourselves into oblivion we went for a short walk in the winter wonderland. I don't remember when we last got this much snow on Thanksgiving. I had to run the snowblower- that was an hour's job I hadn't planned for the schedule, but I got it done before people came! Om helped a lot with the miscellaneous final preparations and the cleanup!



We had two other helpers for cleanup detail too, Cedar and Corkie!



An exceptionally fine holiday!

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Thanksgiving 2012

 
Om and I ate a nice meal at home mid-day, and then set off to have some fun. This was our first stop, our pastor's house and their guests. (Just a note... I'm just showing one picture from each location. It's Thanksgiving! Most everyplace had lots of people there.)



Everyplace we went, we had people do a little project. Each person had to write something they were thankful for on a paper "turkey feather." Here you see this project in progress.



The feathers were fit into the tail of an origami turkey, which went to whatever home we went to next. Here, friends Doug and Cathy show off the turkey they were given. Their family isn't coming till the weekend, so they were happy to have some company and a little fun. You might notice that Om has a basket.



The basket had a selection of those breads you saw yesterday. We passed those out along the way.



The picture above doesn't begin to show the number of people at this place. However, the lady on the left is my friend Betty. She was the first friend I made when we moved up here in 1969. Their dinner was being held at her second daughter's house, with 19 people! All four daughters were there, seven of the 8 grandchildren, and a collection of boyfriends/girlfriends, and spouses. The only one missing was the granddaughter who just had the first great-grandchild. An amazing group!



Our final stop was with a family who was home alone with sick kids, so they enjoyed the visit.

We weren't quite out of breads, but we were almost out of daylight, and Om isn't 100% better from his cold yet. So we came home.

We had a great time!

	See An Evening with Betty See Thanksgiving 2011
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