i totally forgot that there was a year where i was not at home for thanksgiving. it was the year that i decided to go road tripping around the country. i ended up having thanksgiving dinner at my friend’s parent’s place. it was pretty good food and very casual.

i think that i really like the coziness of thanksgiving dinners. actually, i think that i like small, cozy meals enjoyed by good friends. i think that when conversation flows easily from one topic to another and good food is flowing is when you know that you have had a good meal.

i’ve been cooking a lot lately. i made a cheese fondue, an oil-based and a wine-based fondue, and a dessert fondue on friday. sunday i made fish masala and chicken korma for dinner. i’ve never really made indian food before, so that was kind of fun.

maybe i’ll cook more this week, too. i just need to find people who will eat.

every year for thanksgiving, i insist that we get a 20+ pound turkey. my family consists of 5 people, so that means that each of us is responsible for scarfing down 4+ pounds of turkey every year. two of my family members are barely 5 feet tall. this makes eating all of this turkey a challenge.

this year is no different. i took home about 4 pounds of turkey leftovers and i’ve been eating them for every meal. let me tell you, i’m getting sick of turkey.

i think that i’m going to make dinner tomorrow night and i may incorporate some turkey leftovers in my dinner menu. i am going to have to get creative, though, there can only be so much turkey fried rice before i get sick of it…

hi, people.

i am writing you to ask you for those of you who are running wireless networks to please, please secure your networks. take the 5 minutes that it takes to change the password on your router and please use some kind of security to secure your network.

i have been stealing the bandwidth of one of my neighbors and i feel really bad doing it. but please don’t complain that you don’t have any bandwidth left, you’re just giving it away!

but hey, thanks for all the downloads!

your friendly neighborhood security person,
mike.

thanksgiving used to be these huge celebrations with family and friends. we would all gather together at my grandparent’s place. we would feast on a huge dinner and then watch tv as we drifted to sleep from the food-induced coma.

one thanksgiving we decided to bbq a turkey. it was quite an ambitious effort and the turkey barely fit in our bbq.

this year i went home to feast on another thanksgiving dinner. the whole family was there and dinner was good. we took some pictures and as i was leaving my sister was going to visit my brother’s new apartment.

it turned out that the car battery was dead and we had to jump the car to get it started. a little bit of excitement ensued, but we finally got the car started.

i heard it from a friend
about the things you said

sometimes i wonder why it is that we would get so caught up in what other people say or do. why is it that they have such an impact on our lives? why can’t we just let the irrelevant go and enjoy the present?

it seems like recently some people i know have been going through some tough times. i hope that through their struggles they know that they have an excellent support system around them. use your friends, that’s part of what they are there for.

the depeche mode concert is tonight. i don’t know what the plan is exactly in terms of where we are going to go eat, but i have to arrive early to pick up will call tickets at the san jose arena. i REALLY hope that the tickets are decent. i really, really hope that they are. i am terrified that they are going to suck because i don’t know what seat/row i’m in. i went through this third party vendor to buy the tickets and am a little afraid that they might have a bad block of seats. we’ll see.

but still, i’m excited about my first depeche mode concert and am looking forward to it.

it reminds me of the other time that i had tickets to the depeche mode concert. i’m still bitter about that. i don’t even remember if i ever wrote about it, but basically my girlfriend at the time forced me to choose between her or the tickets. crazy, huh?

i am probably one of the biggest hypocrites when it comes to job interviews. when i interviewed for this position, i came in a short sleeve button down shirt and i *think* i wore slacks. but if i see someone else come in similarly attired, they better be damn good. i know, i know. it’s a big double standard, but i don’t think that i would feel comfortable interviewing in a suit.

but one of the ways in which you can surely not impress me is to not wear deodorant. man, that was rough.

the weekend seems to have flown by. i met up with cindy and some other friends on friday in the city. we were supposed to meet in the city at the house in north beach at 6:30 and i had even planned for us to get there a little early. instead, it took us two hours to get into the city. traffic was insane and i felt bad that i arrived so late. but we ordered our food and had a wonderful dinner there.

i bumped into a co-worker of mine while there. such a small world!

seeing cindy again was good, it’s a little weird because our friendship has grown much more through our email and IM correspondence instead of face to face conversations. still, it was good to see her, however briefly it was.

saturday was spent watching the bears lose to USC. i wish i could have said that cal had a chance, but the way they were playing, it certainly felt like a pretty bad loss.

i tinkered around with my fantasy teams and that was pretty much that. instead of being ranked dead last, i’m now up into 7th place. hopefully some of the roster changes will pull me up a little more.

i’m a little addicted right now. this is the first year that i’ve decided to participate in a fantasy league. fantasy basketball is rather addicting, but i think that i’m also not doing a very good job at managing this team. oh well, i guess we’ll see how it all works out, but i think that i may need to shuffle up my roster a little bit. i’m tired of being at the bottom of the barrel!

i’m at the highest ranking in the league that i’ve ever been at, 9th place out of 12. =P i still have a long ways to go. i think my biggest problem is that i choose players that i personally have some kind of attachment for instead of choosing players who are statistically good.