I, for one, plan on doing two things:
-Being pretty miserable as one of a handful of people on campus not going home for the holiday.
-Spending a lot of my completely empty 5-day weekend writing for NaNoWriMo.
On that note, does anyone wanna give me a couple hundred bucks so I can fly cross-country home on Wednesday and then back on Sunday? :dubious:
Either sleeping late and then wasting the day away online or going with my boss and her husband to one of their family’s get-togethers if she wants me to. Same for Christmas and New Year’s.
I might get to go home next year. I don’t know for sure though.
Same thing I have been doing for the last 20 years. Head out into the desert with some friends, and eat, drink, shoot, and bullshit the holiday away. We take trucks down a jeep trail, so there is no of this “backpacking, keep it light” crap. I have more burners on the stove in the boonies than I do at home. We do a full dinner: turkey (done differently each year), all the fixings, wine, all the Good Stuff. Three big 8 person tents, 8 ice chests, inflatable queen-sized bed, etc.
We call this “Roughing It.” 
It will be the first holiday together for if6was9 with me and the kids. Wish us luck. 
Hey, if I was going home, I’d invite you in (though I’m not sure what the parents would say.) But I can’t get anyone to give me something like $500 bucks to fly home either. So, if anyone wants to give me airfare from BWI to ABQ so I can take in some girl I’ve never met to spend the weekend at my parent’s house for Thanksgiving, it’d be really great.
One of the happiest Thanksgivings I spent was in Kuwait at Al Jaber AB. It was right after 9/11, I had a lot of good people with me, and the Kuwaitis bought us a huge feast, to the order of six figures. I reenlisted one of my guys that afternoon, right in front of an alert-parked A-10, signed the paperwork on an AGM-86 missile, and left for the chow hall. Everyone’s spirits were high, and it’s one of the best memories I’ll keep to this day.
This year, my folks are flying out from New Jersey to see me in ‘my element’, and my girlfriend is hopefully going to make it out at the same time–meeting my folks. Most physicists would agree that mixing matter and antimatter would be a bad thing, but I’m thinking the cataclysmic event may result in good times being had by all.
I would have said “may result in a ring being dropped to the aforementioned girlfriend”, but I don’t have the ring yet. . . Besides, I want to make that a quiet, personal thing rather than to have to put her on the spot like that.
Tripler
Aaaah yes. This year ought to be up there in the top ten.
I’m going to visit my Mom in her assisted-living home, as nothing could possibly be more goddam suicidally depressing than Thanksgiving at an assisted-living home. I’ll take her out for dinner, or cook with her in her apt. and maybe have one or two of her resident friends up.
I hate traveling on Thanksgiving, but I gotta rescue poor Mom.
We’re hosting bits and pieces of each family. My inlaws and their dog are driving up from Ocala. My daughter is flying up from Orlando. My mom and aunt, my two sisters with their respective gentlemen, and (very much an outside chance) my brother will be driving down from the Baltimore area. I may invite some unattached friends, should I feel sympathetic stirrings.
I need to figure out where I can get a table big enough. Our dining room table seats 8 in a pinch, and we’ll have at least 11. I suppose 11 TV trays would be kinda tacky??
Being British, it isn’t exactly my holiday, so my boss (also British) and I have decided to get drunk to celebrate “Thursday”. 
I am going home to the big family dinner with the folks. I have already been told what I should cook. I am also going to try to be a voice of reason to those in the family who think we need to bake more than two hams.
Boy, part of me wishes I could go back to Thanksgiving on my own…
This year, we’re going to my brother’s house the weekend before T’giving, and the rest of my family will be there, too. It’s about a six-hour drive.
We’ll be home for T’giving day, so I’ll probably make a basic T’giving meal, mainly because I love to cook T’giving food. (Seriously!!!)
The weekend after T’giving, we’ll go to DH’s parents’ house (about three hours away) where his siblings will congregate as well.
When I was in school and doing T’giving on my own, I generally tried to find others in the same boat so we could throw something together. I invited anyone I could think of, especially foreign students who had never seen Thanksgiving before, or people I knew didn’t like to cook and planned Swanson TV dinners that night. (This can be fun even if you don’t like to cook. Frozen turkey roasts and Stove Top stuffing are easy to fix and relatively cheap.)
One year when DH and I were living in France, we hosted a T’giving meal in our apartment, and invited everyone we knew. There were only a couple of other Americans, but we made it potluck and insisted that people could bring anything they wanted, even if it wasn’t traditional T’giving food. We provided the turkey and stuffing. Everything else was hodgepodge, with lots of typically French food. I think that was the year we decided that homemade chocolate mousse actually did have a place at the Thanksgiving table, so now our kids are more used to seeing mousse than pumpkin pie for dessert.
Kiminy homemade chocolate mousse…mmmmm… That just might find its way to the table at the swampcave this year. See what happens when you blurt out stuff like that?
Thanksgiving day will be celebrated at my house this year. There’s a bunch of us who “ain’t from around here” who get together on turkey day. Everybody’s in charge of bringing something. This year I’m doing the turkey and dressing and the gravy. I always do the gravy, even when I don’t host. I go to the host’s house and make the gravy because nobody else can do it right and we all know, if the gravy ain’t right, then the whole meal is ruined, right? It’s all about the gravy folks! Now, let me find that recipe for chocolate mousse.
On Saturday I’ll go up to my hometown and celebrate with the family. It’ll be the first major holiday since dad died, so it may be a bit subdued just like it was the first Thanksgiving after my brother died but it’ll still be good. It’s lots of family and friends who get a second Thanksgiving dinner. Everybody knows two Thanksgiving dinners are better than one, provided the gravy is done right.
I’m going to Phoenix to have Thanksgiving with my mom. My sister and her family are driving in from San Diego.
Headed to Dublin Ireland for the week, meeting up with some friends who had a temporary transfer over there. On T-day I’ll probably be in a pub somewhere, downing a pint of Guiness and listening to good live Irish session music.
I’ll be on a Cruise Ship docked in Cozumel with the wife and kids. [hijack] Any suggestions for a good meal in Cozumel?[/hijack]
I’m going to California to spend a few days with my family. I get to see my DOGGY! Yay!
Swampbear, I’m the designated gravy-maker too, no matter which side of the family I’m with. Gravy is important!
I’ll be at my boyfriend’s aunt’s house, for the third year in a row. I’m now one of two good cooks, instead of three, as the third moved out of state and probably won’t make it. We’ll have forty-leven kids underfoot (two of them mine), and at some point in the day, the men will all troop out to the barn to discuss horses. We’ll saddle one up for the kiddos if it’s nice out.
I think this year we’ll deep fry a turkey again, so the men will congregate out front, smoking cigars and drinking beer, and the women will center around the kitchen. Fortunately, I’ve learned my way around my aunt’s kitchen by now, so we can interact fairly smoothly. I do more cooking than she does, but she knows where to hide everything. I shall do the gravy, artichoke-parmesan sourdough stuffing, and possibly a pie. Our aunt will do our traditional green bean casserole and jello fluff.
We will all circulate in and out of the house all day long, and it will be mucho fun. Those who do not cook will watch football, and probably also be those that do not clean, but they just get in the way anyway. Oh, and Kyla, the dogs get the scraps!
And I’m thankful that I’m off the hook for hosting it for another year.
I’ll be in Sydney, Australia on business. I’ll probably forget that the day even exists.
I spent one in Chunju, South Korea maybe nine years ago. There actually is (or was) a restaurant in Chungju that served very good traditional American food called the House of Pizza of all things. The Korean lady who ran the joint made an outstanding traditional Thanksgiving dinner which I ate with four co-workers.
Haj
I’m having my mom to Thanksgiving at my house, and maybe a few friends, too. I’ll likely spend all morning and afternoon cooking while my mom “supervises,” then later takes the credit for the wonderful food she’ll get compliments on, conveniently forgetting to mention that she made none of it, just like at Christmas. She’ll simper a bit, and say coyly, “Oh, well, I’m just glad you like it.” When we sit down to eat, I’ll fend her off from overfeeding me, which will make her ask if she cooked the food badly, then I’ll politely remind her that I cooked the food, it tastes good, but I’m really full. Then I’ll clean up the kitchen by myself because, as everyone knows, whoever does the cooking (or pretends to have done the cooking) doesn’t have to clean. :rolleyes:
Even though this sounds like torture, my mom can be amusing when she wants to be, but she gets really stressed and acts like the weight of the world is on her shoulders during holidays, even though my sister (when she’s in town) and I usually do the bulk of the work. Must be a hangover from our childhood. Most importantly, my husband will be there. He’s the only one who can make me laugh when I’m mad or upset and the only person who can keep me from going for my mom’s throat when she pisses me off. While I think my mom occasionally deserves a dressing-down, I’d rather not do it while anyone else is present, and I don’t stay mad for very long, so I’ll likely forget to tell her off later in private.
The Holidays will be hard this year since I lost my Mom so recently. But I am going to do my best, I will be cooking and Son and his Fiancee will be coming to dinner.
I will probably cry a lot. Oh well, that just means I won’t need to use as much salt.