HapTurkey D.... Um.....

Thanksgiving have come and gone and with it a all to short respite from the daily grind.

Wednesday before Thanksgiving my manager "suggested" that everyone take a "looooong lunch. " In other words "see ya Monday. That was nice. When I arrived home everyone was waiting for me so we could play a round of Disc Golf. It came down to a 3 hole sudden death playoff between Gary, Karen's brother, and Tyler. (Who invited Gary to play anyway?) Karen came in third. I came in fourth, then Nancy and Michelle.

Gary came down Sunday from Boston. We played games all week, Gary and Tyler ended up winning the lion's share, Though Michelle did end up winning a game of Carcassone "The Castle"

Thursday came and as usual our turkey was still frozen. I ran cold water through it for a while then just decided I would not stuff it and hopefully it would be done by 2:00, when we were scheduled to eat. I put the bird in around 9:15. Well at 11:45 the bird was .... well, overdone. I cooked the bird in a roasting pan on the grill. I have done this before successfully but this time not so much. Most of the bird was burnt to a crisp. One of the drum stick bones snapped in half when I was attempting to lift the turkey out of the pan. Yummmmm. I carved off what I could salvage from the bird, mostly breast, which actually ended up being not to shabby and tossed the rest. I did reserve some drippings for the stuffing.

Bob brought Jamie over for dinner. They pretty much stuffed themselves but then headed to her house for ANOTHER turkey dinner. Sorry, That's just a little too much mashed potatoes for one day.

Howard, Gary Tyler and I played "Rail Barron" after we cleaned up the kitchen. The game lasted close to four and a half hours. I don't know why I play that game or ANY game with Tyler anymore. He, as expected, won. It was close but playing a game for that long and not winning.... well it is just not right.

Friday morning Michelle Kyle and I took a neighbor's dog for a walk to the Dog Park down the street. Bo, an eight year old Shepard loves a good walk. Unfortunately I was paged and had to cut the trip short. I ended up working 20 hours between Friday and Saturday. There goes the holiday.

Karen and her mom drove to Virginia Saturday morning to help My mom organize her house. They arrived Saturday after noon and cleaned the rest of Saturday and All day Sunday. All reports indicate, the three of them accomplish a bunch. It was a good start anyway. Mom still has her office and her bedroom to go through. Nancy and Karen drove back Monday morning. They left Alexandria around 9:30 AM. Karen walked through the door at home just before 8:00 PM. They did some shopping along the way.

Sunday, The kids raked leaves and cleaned up the house a bit. I ran some errands and did a few odd jobs around the house; Replaced the toilet innards in the power room and the flaps in the rest of the toilets, I cleaned the Oven, replaced the belts on the Stratus, fixed the leak under the sink... Generally kept Busy.

Because I had to work through the holiday I informed my manager (notice I did not ASK my manager) that I was going to take Monday and Tuesday off. I told him I would monitor e-mail and do some followup work, but don't expect me to solve world hunger those two days.

Monday I got the kids off to school. Between 8:20 AM, when Michelle got on the bus and 8:00 PM, when Karen arrived home, It is all a blur. Other than replacing the back breaks on the Stratus, Grocery Shopping, Making dinner, running kids back and forth to and from activities, I cannot remember one thing I did.... I worked just a little bit. Maybe that was it.

Tuesday morning at 5:00 AM I had a conference call I had to be on for work. I got off at around 7:00 and drove Tyler and Kyle to School, Came home, put Michelle on the Bus then crashed till around 10:30 when Karen woke me so we could run some errands. We went out to pick out Tile for the Master Bath, Kitchen and Powder Room. You would never believe it could take so long to pick out tile. We got it done then did a little X-mas shopping before heading to school to pick up the kids.

That, my friends was my weekend. Not too shabby. I didn't get everything done I wanted to but... there is always next weekend ;-)