I didn’t leave my apartment today until 6:15 pm.  I spent the day puttering.  I did a load of laundry.  I put away all the kitchen appliances that got pulled out as I got ready for Thanksgiving (I have a kitchen storage annex behind the coats in my front hall closet, as my kitchen isn’t exactly what you would call spacious).  I dusted (and made myself sneeze repeatedly).  I did some work on my thesis.  And I fixed a hole in a shirt that has been awaiting repair for over six months.  It was one of those quiet catch up days I need every so often.

Tonight I went out to dinner with Scott, Becky, Eric, Autumn and Dave and then off to see They Might Be Giants.  I am not as much of a TMBG fan as the rest of the crew, but I had a great time.  I think this was the best show I’ve seen since I saw Polyphonic Spree at the TLA on Valentine’s Day, 2005.  It was the next to last show in a eleven week tour and they were giddy with excitement to get off the road and back to their homes.  They played two energetic sets, bringing out a horn section for the second half.  After the show was over and the lights were back up, everyone slowly headed to the door.  I noticed a guy in a hooded sweatshirt looking at me and half smiling.  I smiled back and he came over.

He said, “I bet you get this all the time, but I wanted to let you know that I subscribe to your podcast.”

I didn’t know how to respond at first, as this is not something I get all the time.  This is, in fact, only the second time I’ve ever been recognized and approached by someone who recognized me from all this crazy web stuff I do  (Wendy, you were the first!).   I mumbled a few things before pulling Scott over and introducing him.  Of course, neither one of us thought to get the guy’s name because we were both so startled at having been noticed at all.  It was flattering and really cool to be recognized.

I spent the evening with my family out in Plymouth Meeting tonight for round two of Thanksgiving dinner. I brought half a gallon of gravy and there were three kinds of sweet potatoes and no regular ones. The food was delicious, although it was a little chaotic getting everyone seated and settled at first. We toasted to Derek’s first Thanksgiving and spoke of the people we loved who were no longer living. David and Winnie brought three kinds of cake and Jean made two pumpkin pies that were perfect: flaky crust and deep, fragrant spiced pumpkin.

Over dessert I got teased into reading an essay from my thesis and thankfully the response was good. After the eating was over, Amy, Angie and David played “Name that Patient,” a conversation game that goes back their days growing up on the grounds of the Norristown State Hospital, in which the recount tales of the patients they knew from their childhood. Several hours later, it was getting late and my great Aunt Belle, now into her nineties and the last surviving member of her generation, needed a ride back into the city, so we headed out.

I took a bunch of pictures, but somehow managed to leave out half the people there. I guess that’s what happens when there’s a baby in the room.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Last year this time I was out in Oregon, getting ready to cook dinner with my parents. The celery, mushrooms and onions were chopped and bagged, ready for the stuffing. Multiple heads of garlic had freed from their papery skins and the defrosted turkey was resting pertly in the fridge in my mom’s largest metal mixing bowl.

Cooking holiday meals with my dad (he handles the bulk of the holiday cooking in my family) is one of the great joys of my life. We have a certain innate ability to anticipate what the other one it going to do before they do it without talking. It means that I know when he needs help maneuvering the turkey and he knows when I need a little help draining the potatoes. This skill also makes moving furniture and loading cars together quite pleasant.

Luckily, I’ll be home in December and we’ll get to do the holiday kitchen dance for Christmas dinner. Until then, I’ll make his gravy recipe for my extended family Thanksgiving dinner on Friday.

Right at the moment I’m a little bit tapped out when it comes to writing. I’ve been posting like crazy over on Slashfood and Green Daily this week and working on my thesis to boot (however, the light at the end of the tunnel is in sight). This is one of those nights that, had I not made a commitment to do NaBloPoMo, I’d be skipping out on a post entirely.

However, since I’m here, I might say something of value. And here it is. I’ve been dealing with lots of change lately (although change has been fairly constant in my life over the last few years, predictable and yet totally unnerving all in the same instant). My life is changing drastically in that I’m nearly done with school and I’m figuring out how to be a grown up again. I’m settling into the idea that I will be able to support myself with brain power and hard work. A big part of making that happen for me is literally working on changing my mind in order to bring my thoughts into line with the reality I want to see. I realize that everyone has different levels of tolerance for the whole “manifest your reality” thing, but it’s something I embrace on a very basic level. How can things (good and bad) happen in your life if don’t actually believe that they are possible?

Each day, when I sit down at my computer to work, I try to spend some time noticing my thoughts. At first it’s hard to even pay attention, but it has gotten easier for me. When I start to feel worn down or defeated, I stop and notice what my interior monologue is doing. I shake my head to clear whatever message is running on the screen behind my eyes, take a deep breath and choose a different thought stream. And thus change my mind.

We smoked a turkey in the Orion cooker. We whipped up garlic mashed potatoes and gingery peas and carrots. Now we offer an easy pumpkin cheesecake and an even easier homemade cranberry sauce recipe (I’m a big fan of recipes where you just throw it all together, cook for a little while and then poof! Deliciousness!). These two are no fail, never let you down recipes. And I dare you not to love that pumpkin cheesecake.

And don’t despair, because we’ll be back again soon with a good way to use up some of those turkey day leftovers.

Sitting at my computer, I’m realizing that I don’t actually have enough mental wherewithal to create a single, cohesive post tonight.  Instead, here are two tidbits.

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There is an old man in my building who always used to flirt with me.  He’d see me coming and make a big show of saying something like, “Look at that face!  Such a beauty!”  He’d make eye contact with whomever else was around while patting his chest, as if my presence made his heart race.  Then he’d say, “If only I was thirty years younger.”

It was fairly embarrassing, but I knew he always did it from a place of harmless sincerity, so I played along (blushing and waving him away every time).  In the last six months he has gotten increasingly frail and doesn’t even look at me when he passes me in the lobby.   I never learned his name and so can’t greet him or try to find out how he’s doing from the desk clerk.  Watching this once buoyant person wither and decline is making me sad.

*    *    *

Last week I had cause to park my car at a parking meter while I attended a meeting.  It was a two-hour meter and the meeting ran about five minutes over two minutes.  I booked it out of there, hoping all the while that the parking ticket gods would smile upon me and spare me a $20 fine.  As I walked up to my car, I saw that a woman from the parking authority was in the process of writing me a ticket.  As I approached I said, “Oh shoot, I guess I didn’t make it out in time.  I only just ran out of money.”

She started respond in a defensive manner, expecting me to start to get angry.  I explained that I accepted the ticket and thanked her for doing her job.  She stopped writing, took a chip of the plastic bag that was looped around her wrist, crunched down on it and stared at me.  As she swallowed she held out the back of her pad and said, “Here honey.  Write your address down and I’ll send you a remediation slip.  We can cancel the ticket if we’re in the middle of writing it and the vehicle owner arrives.”  I sort of blinked unbelievingly at her for a moment, then stammered out a thank you and wrote down the information.  It was a nice interaction and an appreciated ticket reprive.

For my money, there are few things in life better than an assortment of cookies, crackers and fruit clustered around a pot of molten chocolate.   This evening, my dining room table had the good fortune to support such a spread.  It was deliciousness in action.

One area of my life I don’t write about much is my involvement with an organization called the CA House.  CA stands for Christian Association.  These days the word Christian is fraught with right-of-center cultural assumptions.  Those people who consider themselves open-minded, left-leaning Christians are often afraid to “come out” as people of faith for fear that their friends and acquaintances will see them differently if they admit to the fact that they believe in God or Jesus or any other number of things associated with religious practice.

I must admit that I do not consider myself to be a Christian, being that by birthright I am Jewish and by lifelong practice I’m a Unitarian Universalist.  My beliefs don’t line up with any one particular religion (one of the beautiful things about being a UU is the fact that it is encouraged to cobble your belief-system together from a multitude of sources).  However, I associate myself with the CA because they are a voice for liberal, progressive religion at the University of Pennsylvania and I believe in making places like that possible and available.

The organization embodies all the forward thinking, people-centered, radical ideas that I feel the original Christians must have embraced.  They are guided by love and the belief that all people deserve to be treated justly, fairly and with open hearts.

This Sunday, November 18th, the CA is having a fundraiser.  It is silent auction to be held in the Hall of Flags in Houston Hall, on Penn’s campus.  There is an immense list of donated items that will be available for bidding, and chances are you stand to get some pretty excellent deals if you show up.

As most of you know, my younger sister is a folkie singer-songwriter. However, what I don’t mention too often is the fact that she came to her love of music honestly, because our dad is a long-time singer/songwriter/folkie in his own right. He learned to play right around the time he went through puberty, when his older brothers thrust a mediocre acoustic guitar at him and announced they needed someone to play rhythm. More than 40 years later, he’s still at it and this time he’s joining his music up with his hopes for a more peaceful world.

If you happen to be among the lucky people in the world who will be in Portland, OR on December 27th (happily, I get to count myself among that number) you have the opportunity to see both my dad and my sister playing in the very same concert. It is an event being put on by People of Faith for Peace, an organization that my dad has been very involved with over the last few years. Joining them on the bill will be Marilyn Keller, a local Portland jazz singer. It will be a fun way to hear some excellent music and raise money for peace. And how could that be a bad thing?