This year, having moved away from the parents and not wanting to spend the cash on a plane ticket back for such a short weekend, I opted to stay in-town for the weekend. Given the opportunity for excessive work and toil instead of rest, I chose to cook Thanksgiving dinner for others also sticking around.

Cooking turned out to be a bit of frenetic experience. Because of work schedules and some very The Man management inspired exercises in frustration, I didn't have much time to try out new recipes before the big date and was pretty frazzled. I ended up pulling the menu together at the last minute. Breaking the oven latch so I have to use a screwdriver to open door did not help one bit.

How-ev-er...dinner itself turned out quite tastily. At least, that's what the survey said. Everyone was rather stuffed by the end.

The final menu is as follows:

• Roasted Brined Turkey with Herb Butter


• Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Acorn Squash with Sweet Spiced Butter


• Your Standard Salad Mix with White Wine-Walnut Oil Vinegarette


• Andouille Sausage Cornbread Dressing


• Braised Leeks with Bacon Bechamel Sauce


• Cranberry, Pomegranate, Orange, Lime Sauce


• Gravy, Glorious, Gravy


• Pecan Pie


• Pumpkin Pie

Of course there were leftovers, but for some reason, I haven't been in the mood to eat them. In fact, I've been going through other leftovers and eating out. I suppose all the effort I put into putting making the dishes turned me off a little in some strange sort of way.

Asides from that, I took the opportunity to relax and catch a break. I got some DDR and Halo 2 in. I also got the apartment cleaned again and just chilled. It's been very nice, but I could use another few days.

Having a home theater set-up is just so awesome. *hugs LCD TV, receiver and speakers and DVD Player*

HD resolution + surround sound is all that.

Sometimes I read something that makes me wonder if people just naturally, give out choice quotes, or there's some sort of cold self-advancing agenda on one or more parties to an article. It's probably not so clear cut as those extremes in most cases, but there are cases that just make you go "Hmmmm".

One good example is this quote from an article about how the need to run influenced human evolution -

Personally, I'm just waiting for that scientist to bust out the "See? She's got no back!".

One more "Small Oddities of Music" post: Puffy, the Japanese pop-rock duo of Teen Titans theme song fame in the US, now has its very own cartoon show on Cartoon Network called "Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi" (yes, that's what it's called). Un(?)fortunately, I don't get that channel, so I can't actually comment on the show itself, but this NY Times article and going through the official web site for the show make it come off as some very bizzare US/Japan hybrid - a non-animé styled cartoon version of a modern day Monkees show that has English voice actors for the main characters, but also features the duo singing their songs in the songs' original language as well as doing "live-action skits in a mixture of Japanese and strongly accented English". Utterly bizarre.

This is definitely my vote for oddest DVD feature - Britney Spears greatest hits DVD has her doing a karaoke version of Toxic where the subtitles move up and down to mask young and innocent eyes from her nipples. It's so blatantly sexual and silly at the same time that I can't help but laugh.

Well, it's time for the usual several weeks past catch up entry.

The company shipped me back to Saint Louis for a week a bit back. Although the timing was absolutely horrible - missed a Hilary Hahn concert and had to vote absentee, it was a really great trip. I got to see a lot of my friends back there and got a lot of work done during the week. I continued my trend of eating out way too much and got to try out some new places that had opened in the past 5 months. This included a very nice and reasonable Peruvian place called Mango in Shrewsbury.

Probably the most important thing I got out of this week was the realization that I needed to separate my work space out from the rest of my home. As it stands now, it's way too easy to get distracted and not stay on target. In order for better separation, I decided to get a TV. And then I decided that I needed to get a DVD player and a home theater set-up to go with it. Yes kids, I'm just that crazy.

Asides from that, there's not too much going on. The apartment is finally clean again. I've also started up running and yoga after a month + 1/2 - two month hiatus. I guess you could sorta say that I'm getting my life back to normal, which is quite nice.