the Unexpressed Advantage

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone,

The second one this year, I suppose. Although yesterday was no cup of tea. I mean it wasn't bad, but just compared to watching football and feasting on my Aunt Susie-led family's phenomenal thanksgiving feast, it was a little lower than a normal day. It started with work, part of which included me interviewing for my own job. Now if that's not the strangest thing you've heard today, then your life is definitely more interesting than mine. Well, let's be honest. Your life is more interesting than mine. But at least you're here reading my blog, so something has to be said for that (not you, mom).

I'll explain that work thing some other time. It's no big deal. About halfway through the day, which is a normal thursday here, I realized that it was in fact American Thanksgiving. They're very discreet about it here. I think the turkey's are hidden in cellars and in order to buy a pumpkin pie at safeway you have to know a manager and offer him a special password. It wasn't until I came across an American friend's blog that I realized it was Turkey Day.

The sum of my personal celebration consisted of having a chicken breast sandwich for lunch. It was a sentimental moment.

Work was fine, but I was fiercely tired after, so I decided to go home and nap for a half hour before going shopping to buy some ingredients for a thanksgiving dinner the following (friday) night. Some Americans I know are getting together. I decided to buy twice baked potatoes. NO. I decided to MAKE twice baked potatoes. This seemed like a little more work than I'm usually down with for a group dinner, but hey, it's thanksgiving! And I didn't think anyone else would try to make them.

So I came home from work and went shopping for ingredients. Actually I came home from work, took a half hour nap, which turned into a 2 and a half hour nap, and then woke up and called my family. That's always fun. The thanksgiving conversation involves some version of, "how are you?" "I'm so full!" "Have fun in Canada." I do that 9 times and then chat with my mom or Aunt Susie (who makes the best twice baked potatoes in the world).

After that I had to head over to go Jam with my Jam Buddies Ryan¹ and Shannon. We did some Jamming and also some ranting. I'm thinking of calling them my "rant" buddies from now on. No, not really. I just wanted to use the word rant in a sentence twice and three times in a paragraph. But the really cool thing is that Lucas affirmed us on how cool it is to "Jam." Some people call me the Space Cowboy.²

Afterward, I went to safeway to pick up the 2xBAKE potato ingredients. I figured since it was around 10pm, I'd be able to shop, cook, scoop, mix, and assemble inside of 2 hours and be in bed by midnight.

No. No, no, no, no.

Everything went wrong. The potatoes took like 2 HRS to cook. They never actually ended up done. After about an hour and fifteen, I cut four in half. Oh man, they weren't done. So I figured I'd just throw them in the toaster oven and put the other six back in the oven. I have a cool large toaster oven that cooks frozen pizzas, and it bakes to. It just doesn't bake when you have it set to toast. So those four potatoes got TOASTED for an extra 15 minutes.

Now I have twice baked potatoes that are a little more like twice baked potato jerky. And I'm dead tired because the whole ordeal kept me up till 2:30. I really am not very good at cooking potatoes. Never have been. They're alwasy too chunky and undercooked.

But i'm still bringing them. Oh yeah! You better believe it. And if nobody likes them, I'll just forfeit my portion of the turkey and rolls and eat nothing but twice baked jerky.

Happy Thanksgiving, – dan³

p.s. I've decided that i'm jealous of Søren Kierkegaard's slashy danish O, and seeing as how i'm 1/4 Danish, i'm changing my name to: dªñ räy So there.

1. Yes, I have lots of famous golfer type friends [ƒ]
2. © 1974 Steve Miller and the Steve Miller Band. Words and music by Steve Miller [ƒ]
3. Can't you tell I'm new to this whole footnote thing? [ƒ]