this year i went home for thanksgiving dinner. it was pretty good dinner with the usual dinner items: turkey, cranberries, salad, stuffing, and a zuccini casserole. every year we have at least those dishes. every year i think to myself that maybe, just maybe this will be the year that i will actually *like* the zuccini casserole, but, alas, no…i didn’t like it this year either.

i usually end up trying a little bit of it because my parents rave about how good it is and how much they like it and how i should try it. it’s the same pattern every year…and i still don’t like it. i don’t know why i keep trying it, thinking that i might actually like it this time. i guess some traditions die hard.

after dinner, my dad and i sifted through all of the advertisements looking for the good sales. i think that my dad woke up at 5AM this morning to try and get in on some deals at best buy’s 6 hour sale which started at 6AM this morning. it’s craziness, i tell you…sheer madness.

after we finished looking at ads, my dad challenged me to some games of pool. the first two games were overwhelmingly large victories for me. i crushed him. ph33r m3. but then, he came back and his aim was true and he proceeded to romp me in three straight games. after that i decided to give up and rest.

—–

a long, long time ago, it used to be tradition that we would go over to my aunt’s place for thanksgiving dinner. we would go in the early afternoon and then we would catch up with my aunt and uncle for a while.

we would gorge ourselves with more food than we could eat and then after all was done, we would sit around moaning in pain. once the pain was gone, i would go and hang out with my cousin. my cousin was a big computer super know it all and i wanted to be just like him. he would show me all these cool things about computers and we’d talk about it forever. then we would play some computer games that he had or check out other such things.

in the more recent future, after dinner we would talk about our going ons in life and just have a grand time.

my aunt passed away a couple of years ago and thanksgiving dinner has become a more private affair since. my family stays at home and cooks a grand feast for ourselves and we still gorge ourselves silly. but i am reminded of my aunt whenever the holidays come around.

—–

happy thanksgiving! i guess it’s nice to have a holiday set aside where you can reflect about what you are thankful for in this holiday season. it’s also a time of year to think about all of the gorging you will do at the dinner table.

this past year has definitely given me many things to be thankful for. i’m thankful for my family and friends who are so much a part of my daily life. i am thankful for my health, specifically my arm so that i can continue to play volleyball, a sport that i have recently come to enjoy quite a bit. i can go on and on about all of the things that i could be thankful for, but i’m too busy playing games to be able to name it all…oh, i am thankful for games and the distraction that they provide from real life. we all need our escapes, you know?

anyhow, happy thanksgiving, everyone!

—–

i’ve been fighting it for a long, long time now. i didn’t want to be known as a blogger. i didn’t think that it would be good for me to start up blogging. i liked that i did things in an archaic way. i liked that i made life hard for myself and wrote everything myself. i liked that i could only update once a day. i liked that i could only update from a machine that had very specific software on it. really…i did.

but i guess my stubborness has finally changed. maybe i’ve finally seen the light, i don’t know. i think that what really sparked the whole blog software thing for me is the fact that i have two friends now who are hosting their blogs off my server using blogging software…and after i set up the software for them it looked really cool.

i started up my tv blog just to test out software, and i think that i will stop that because i don’t like the software and i’ll just add the tv blog to this site. i’ll just have to see how i can import the entries from the other site to here. we’ll see, i guess.

but i’ve looked at movable type, and though i sort of like the idea of publishing static HTML, the appeal of having dynamic PHP content really made the case for a PHP based blogger tool. and so i’ve found this….pMachine, which looks sort of cool. I’m not totally happy with its templating power, but i like this more than b2, so i think i’ll stick it out and use this from now on.

dammit….i’ve become a blogger.

last night i had everything planned. i was going to leave work early so that i could go and pick up a birthday cake for dardy and also pizza for everyone else. the usual bowling crowd has temporarily moved bowling over to a more general “fun night out”. last week we played cards, this week was a video game night.

it seemed like everything was in order…i had given myself extra time in case there was a problem with the ice cream cake. i was trying to get them to make orange icing for the lettering for the cake, but they didn’t have any, so i settled for red. oh well. the cake didn’t take as long as i thought it would, but the pizza…the pizza took a lot longer than i expected.

i ordered 3 large pizzas: 2 combos and 1 pizza half sausage and pepperoni, half veggie. they messed up the order and made a large sausage and pepperoni, instead. so they gave me a small veggie pizza to make up for it, free of charge. cool!

so finally, when i got to the apartment at 8:05pm, 5 minutes after i told everyone to meet at my place, i was shocked to find that there were people waiting for me. is this the same crowd that consistently shows up half an hour late to bowling all the time? i wasn’t sure.

but we all went got in from the brutal cold and warmed up with some pizza. the games started shortly thereafter. the big three games of choice were a racing game, a football game, and CHU CHU ROCKET! i love that game. it is what makes the dreamcast platform worth it.

sort of a guy’s night out, though there were a few girls in the mix, who i think were a little bored. oh well, maybe we’ll do a card night next week…actually, i sort of feel like playing pool, so maybe we’ll hit a pool hall and pearl tea or something.

—–