Florida was nice, got back Friday night,but for some reason I have this bizare aversion to blogging on weekends not sure what it is.
Anyhow, got down there in one piece Tuesday afternoon. Flight down was pretty uneventful, although we did see Ben Roethlisberger in the Pittsburgh airport, walking to a plane with a cop on either side of him. TPA airport was a mess, and we had to wait like 25 minutes for our luggage and it took another 75 minutes to get to Dad's, a trip that usually takes about half that time. We were all starving, so we just grabbed a pizza on the way home, and scarfed it down on the back deck while knocking back the usual allotment of beers.
Spent all day Wednesday putting up Christmas decorations outside. I'm not a big Christmas guy at all, and wrestling with cheap ass Made-In-China reindeer, sleighs and polar bears makes me like it even less. But it ends up being serious male bonding time, which is always good, especially since my Dad is just as careless as me when it comes to following instructions. They go absolutely all-out with their decorations and have won their neighborhood's decorating contest 3 years in a row, so I guess they always feel like they have to one-up themselves each year. Also got all the lights up around the house, which seems to get easier and easier every year at least.
Gorged ourselves on turkey Thursday and watched the Bears game out on the deck after dinner. My stepmom is Lithuanian and her mother comes over, so there's always some very nontraditional plates on the table in addition to the usual thanksgiving fare--kugela (which is a dense and thick potato casserola), kapusta and kielbasa (kraut and sausage) and this really scarey cold beet soup with shrimp in it, which is the only thing I won't touch due to my aversion to beets. They're unnaturally red and creep me out.
Got up early Friday and finished some last minute decorating before heading to the airport for our 2:10 flight. At least we thought it was a 2:10 flight. As we were heading out the door, I peeked at the itinerary and it turned out the flight left at 1:20 (it was 12:25 as we were leaving). I called USAir and gave them my best "Oh-My-God-I've-Been-Stuck_on-I-75-For An-Hour" sob story, but they made it pretty clear that since I had bought a super-cheap ticket on Hotwire that there was nothing they could do for me and I'd have to sort it out at the airport. We raced up to the counter at 1:08 with our best harried faces on, and they rebooked us on a 2:15 flight through Philly without any problems. One-way overpriced ticket purchase averted. Whew.
But the story gets better. After we got out to the terminal (and having the TSA do a full body search on me since we were flagged due to the itinerary change...which pisses me off to no end, but that's another rant for another time), we saw a huge line of really pissed off people standing at the gate next to ours. I looked up on the board--and sure enough, that was the gate for the 1:20 flight we were supposed to take to Charlotte. Turns out the plane had some kind of mechancial problem and wasn't going to leave until 8 PM. Bullet dodged!
As retribution for my good fortune though, the air travel gods stuck me in the last row of the flight up to Philly on the aisle (I have to have a window seat or I get antsy) with K across from me, and treated us to 2 hours and 15 minutes of the worst turbulence I've ever flown through. I ended up spilling Diet Coke all over myself twice.
Friday night--nothing doing. Saturday we hit the grocery to pick up supplies for our Sunday After Thanksgiving Feast, and then cooked it yesterday for 8 guests and still have plenty of leftovers. My buddy Kevin and his wife Peg brought this pumpkin creme pie over that just may have softened my dislike for pumpkin pie just a bit. Well, a lot. I ate 2 pieces of it for breakfast. I made White Castle Stuffing (mmmm) and some smoked-gouda mashed taters that didn;t have anywhere near enough smoked gouda in them because I used 6 lbs of potatoes instead of the 3 that the recipe called for. Detect a pattern of ignorance here?
My sister came by yesterday too and I finally got to pick her brain on this Mormon juice racket
that she's gotten into. After picking her brain for an hour, I guess it's not a cult, maybe the juice has some redeeming medicinal qualities, but the Amway-style of network marketing still sucks
in my opinion.
She's moving to Salt Lake City in 2 weeks. Egads! Not like we never see each other, but now I'm the only member of the clan left in Chicago.
Anyhow, got down there in one piece Tuesday afternoon. Flight down was pretty uneventful, although we did see Ben Roethlisberger in the Pittsburgh airport, walking to a plane with a cop on either side of him. TPA airport was a mess, and we had to wait like 25 minutes for our luggage and it took another 75 minutes to get to Dad's, a trip that usually takes about half that time. We were all starving, so we just grabbed a pizza on the way home, and scarfed it down on the back deck while knocking back the usual allotment of beers.
Spent all day Wednesday putting up Christmas decorations outside. I'm not a big Christmas guy at all, and wrestling with cheap ass Made-In-China reindeer, sleighs and polar bears makes me like it even less. But it ends up being serious male bonding time, which is always good, especially since my Dad is just as careless as me when it comes to following instructions. They go absolutely all-out with their decorations and have won their neighborhood's decorating contest 3 years in a row, so I guess they always feel like they have to one-up themselves each year. Also got all the lights up around the house, which seems to get easier and easier every year at least.
Gorged ourselves on turkey Thursday and watched the Bears game out on the deck after dinner. My stepmom is Lithuanian and her mother comes over, so there's always some very nontraditional plates on the table in addition to the usual thanksgiving fare--kugela (which is a dense and thick potato casserola), kapusta and kielbasa (kraut and sausage) and this really scarey cold beet soup with shrimp in it, which is the only thing I won't touch due to my aversion to beets. They're unnaturally red and creep me out.
Got up early Friday and finished some last minute decorating before heading to the airport for our 2:10 flight. At least we thought it was a 2:10 flight. As we were heading out the door, I peeked at the itinerary and it turned out the flight left at 1:20 (it was 12:25 as we were leaving). I called USAir and gave them my best "Oh-My-God-I've-Been-Stuck_on-I-75-For An-Hour" sob story, but they made it pretty clear that since I had bought a super-cheap ticket on Hotwire that there was nothing they could do for me and I'd have to sort it out at the airport. We raced up to the counter at 1:08 with our best harried faces on, and they rebooked us on a 2:15 flight through Philly without any problems. One-way overpriced ticket purchase averted. Whew.
But the story gets better. After we got out to the terminal (and having the TSA do a full body search on me since we were flagged due to the itinerary change...which pisses me off to no end, but that's another rant for another time), we saw a huge line of really pissed off people standing at the gate next to ours. I looked up on the board--and sure enough, that was the gate for the 1:20 flight we were supposed to take to Charlotte. Turns out the plane had some kind of mechancial problem and wasn't going to leave until 8 PM. Bullet dodged!
As retribution for my good fortune though, the air travel gods stuck me in the last row of the flight up to Philly on the aisle (I have to have a window seat or I get antsy) with K across from me, and treated us to 2 hours and 15 minutes of the worst turbulence I've ever flown through. I ended up spilling Diet Coke all over myself twice.
Friday night--nothing doing. Saturday we hit the grocery to pick up supplies for our Sunday After Thanksgiving Feast, and then cooked it yesterday for 8 guests and still have plenty of leftovers. My buddy Kevin and his wife Peg brought this pumpkin creme pie over that just may have softened my dislike for pumpkin pie just a bit. Well, a lot. I ate 2 pieces of it for breakfast. I made White Castle Stuffing (mmmm) and some smoked-gouda mashed taters that didn;t have anywhere near enough smoked gouda in them because I used 6 lbs of potatoes instead of the 3 that the recipe called for. Detect a pattern of ignorance here?
My sister came by yesterday too and I finally got to pick her brain on this Mormon juice racket
that she's gotten into. After picking her brain for an hour, I guess it's not a cult, maybe the juice has some redeeming medicinal qualities, but the Amway-style of network marketing still sucks
in my opinion.
She's moving to Salt Lake City in 2 weeks. Egads! Not like we never see each other, but now I'm the only member of the clan left in Chicago.
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