We’re heading to my Aunt’s like we do every year. About a 6.5 hour drive. I don’t have to cook, but I might peel potatoes. No turkey on the agenda. Just ham. We’re planning to have a family baking event as my boy recently discovered a love of baking cookies.
It’s usually the three of us, plus my Aunt and Uncle, my grandmother, and a couple friends of my Aunt’s where the guy’s anxiety is so bad he can’t attend large Thanksgiving gatherings. I’ve always found it kind of ironic he chooses to spend it instead with some people he barely knows. But we’re going on the fourth year by now so I think they’ve decided we’re cool.
It’ll just be Mrs Wheelz and myself for Thanksgiving. I’m currently away from home on a work project and will return Wednesday evening (not my choice), so any shopping and advance prep will fall on her shoulders.
As of this post, she has not decided whether she wants to bother doing anything. So my current answer is a solid “No Clue.”
I’ve met some celebrities before and haven’t embarrassed myself. I don’t think I will next time, either (although all bets are off if it’s Keira Knightley)!
I say Thanksgiving is in November, but I know other countries have it in other months. More power to 'em.
My dad is a Princeton grad, and I’d be glad to get a degree there, too - maybe my Ph.D. in American history? Very tempting.
As bad as the American political situation is, I’m not at all concerned about a second Civil War. More Jan. 6-style events, though? Yeah, that could happen. Ugh.
When I worked for LiveNation I met celebrities all the time. I played ping-pong with Ben Folds. I drove Valerie Bertinelli from the Four Seasons in Georgetown to the Verizon Center for Van Halen in my Crown Vic (her son was playing in the band).
I once had a very nice 20-minute conversation with Faith Hill during dinner in the craft services tent, and I didn’t know who she was. I mean I knew who Faith Hill was, but I didn’t realize I was talking to her. She was just wearing jeans and a t-shirt and no makeup. As I was finishing eating I actually asked her what she did in the show.
I’ve been friends (or friendly acquaintances, at least) with a few celebrity-adjacent people, and I’ve hung out with some celebrities as a result. I wasn’t over-awed with even the ones I was a fan of. Somehow, when I actually meet a person, there’s a definite separation in my mind between the celebrity persona and the actual human I’m talking to.
I wouldn’t want to move to the location of any of the Ivies for a year, but I’d love to have an all-expenses-paid year in England, so I’d take Oxford up on the offer. Would I be able to stay the whole year even after I inevitably flunk out of my course for lack of diligence?
Reading everyone’s replies about Thanksgiving plans got me thinking. My extended family always had very set holiday traditions, and we each had a specific role to fill. As the different nuclear families changed with marriages, divorces, births, and kids growing up, we made some adjustments here and there, but we still worked hard to keep the core traditions. After my mom and mother-in-law died, my brother and I struggled to keep the same experience, but our cousins stopped traveling to have Thanksgiving with us, and it was too much work to create the big family Christmas celebrations at my in-laws’ picture-perfect house in the country once the woman who had originally set it all up was gone.
Nowadays, the only family left in town are my household of three and my brother. My daughter and son-in-law have a house and are thinking of kids, and they, understandably, want to start their own traditions. After a little bit of nostalgic regret about the changes, I’m feeling a sense of freedom. This will be the first Thanksgiving since I was in my early 20’s that I won’t be responsible for anything except showing up and eating, and I’m looking forward to it!
After considerable dithering and discussion, the answer is finally clear: my family’s not coming here (from out of state) for Thanksgiving. Various portions of my sister’s side had been doing so for many years, starting with when their children (now parents of grown children) were small enough for some to need highchairs. That came to an abrupt, and we thought temporary, end in 2020 (hello Zoom!); but it took until this year for me to feel brave enough to invite them again, and it didn’t work out for them to come. I’m not sure whether the tradition’s dead forever, but it might be.
I’ll be having three friends over, however; so there’ll still be a party. And much less careful tiptoeing around political subjects.
– I don’t know what the chances are for a hot war, of any of those versions; I just know that I’m afraid it is possible and I sure as hell hope we don’t have one. Didn’t vote.
– hmm. Shall I pick Cornell because, if I’m willing to do quite a bit of driving, I wouldn’t need to move? Or shall I pick someplace else, in which case I need to research each area to find out which I’d find most interesting? And is the scholarship going to pay for the cats’ and dog’s expenses, and for a living place out in the country? – Cornell does have an ag school, I don’t know about the others. I’m sure any of them would have courses I’d find fascinating. – didn’t vote in that one.
I thought seriously about a PhD in social welfare/social policy at either Penn or Princeton, but the statistics on academic employment are so bleak, I figured I’d do better as a social worker. I don’t regret my decision.
I chose Brown, because I really like Providence. Have good memories of a visit there. Plus I love the traditional “East Coast” vibe of the campus. I almost chose Cornell, because I read Matt Ruff’s first novel, and it made Cornell sound super weirdly cool. I also used to work with a “townie” from Ithaca, so I have a tiny bit of familiarity with that side, as well.
I also had to make a choice for the European university – between Oxford and Edinburgh. I’d spent time in Oxford a while ago, and after going through Morse and Endeavour it feels almost too familiar. That sounds weird, but that’s how it feels. Edinburgh has always intrigued me, even though the family I’ve been able to trace nearly all came from Glasgow and other west Scotland locations.
My family has all moved away, and it’s too far to drive for a weekend. I don’t look forward to flying at Thanksgiving, so it may be this the end of family holidays for my younger sister and I.
While I haven’t eaten anywhere near all the cheeses on that list (at least, not to my knowledge; I’ve eaten cheeses at parties and otherwise at other people’s houses that weren’t labeled and/or I’ve forgotten the names of), I have eaten cheeses that aren’t on that list. Local goat or sheep feta, for instance. Mmmmmmm.
