My dad lives at the Oregon Coast and my brother lives in Vancouver, Washington. That means I live in between them and my house is a good place for a holiday. Thanks very much to both of them for coming to my place on Thanksgiving. It was very nice to have your company. It was just us three guys but we still put a dinner together. I warn you though, if you are a “foodie” or way into great cooking, you may want to look away. None of us cook much, so we didn’t. As in the past with just us we heated up food instead of making any of it ourselves. It is a lot less work.

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Thanks again to my dad and brother for hanging out. It was a nice day. The star-shaped cookies were from my $9.95 gingerbread tree kit. I was looking forward to making that. I bought one for my brother too.

You can see my new house was starting to come together. I still didn’t and don’t have any of my photos up on the walls. I will work on it. They are in a big pile after being taken down at my old house.

I still very much love my new little blue tree and my big moon mirror from Salvation Army. Back then I had not yet finished my holiday decorations.

I really like my new ivy in the kitchen windows. It will grow to fill that space nicely.

Then it was time to mix the icings for my gingerbread tree. Thanks to my brother for helping me. I added too much water and it came out a bit runny. I had to wait for it to dry out a bit. They give you WAY more icing than you really need.

After I had the white icing on it was still looking something like the picture on the box, just extra. It would get out of control with the green.

I got my dad to try out my interactive electronic globe. I really like it. It is a great way to add to your geography knowledge and not just for kids. It has a quiz game mode where it asks you to find countries, capitals, etc., and really puts pressure on you. It helps to force the info into your head. It often surprises me how little people know about the world. My family however does respectably. Mostly.

Most of the things you see sitting around my house are gifts people have given me. The stuffed little man is Darwin, from my sister, the frogs and tikis from Jennifer, the turtle from Fawn, the Cardinal from Jonna, the Costa Rican pipe from my dad… You should see the shelves by the front door. I have a lot more interesting things there including a piece of rock from Mt. Hood, graphic LPs from Nightmare before Christmas, unbroken geodes, gift cards for telescope time, an illuminated animated moon, sunken treasure coin, blue-glowing Ikea head, unplanted carnivorous plant garden, giant talking PEZ Donkey, and all sorts of other fun things including some of my favorite books and DVDs.

 

Oh boy, here we go. I started putting the green icing on the tree very carefully just like the box showed, but A: It was too wet. and B: There was far too much of it. I didn’t use even close to all of it and still I ended up with a big flowing blob of a tree. Oh well. It was still fun to make. When it dried it was ROCK hard. When I decided to eat some of it it practically took power tools and made a huge mess in my kitchen. How did it taste? Not very good.

 

Eventually it was time to get dinner ready. You can see my dad doing some “cooking”, standing next to the microwave waiting for something to heat up. Thank you to whoever invented the microwave.

I do not eat yams. Again you can see my happy stockings for myself and my outdoor cat friend. Give me a break. I enjoy it. I keep thinking how glad I am to have my nice Trica stools and my breakfast nook table out of storage. I am very excited to have room for myself and things. Finally. It took 4 years from the time I bought some of my furniture until I actually got to use it. I love my little blue Dollar Tree bird.

Back to the meal prep. That ham was very good. It is also the last ham I will ever have. I am still proud of my choice. Thanks again to my dad and brother for their work.

I must annoy the crap out of people, taking pictures all the time. I can hear it now, “Sit down and eat.” I was thrilled to be using my new dining room for dining. It was the first time in the new house. Happy Thanksgiving. I am always proud that no one is saying grace at our meals. I am very lucky to be from a family of intelligent people. It is definitely not the norm. There are about as many churches as houses in my neighborhood.

That is a pretty complete meal for three non-cooks. It was tasty.

Boy was there a lot of meat and things leftover. I divided everything up and gave some to each of us.

After a rest it was time for desert. Yes, I know we didn’t bake or make any of it ourselves. It was still delicious and much easier. There were also yams with marshmallow, but again, I do not eat that.

After dinner we hung out together and looked at a thousand Black Friday ads, newspaper and otherwise, as you see Dennis doing here online.

Happy Thanksgiving (I can say that whenever I want) to all the people I didn’t get to share the day with. Thanks so much for looking.