Sunday, November 19, 2006

kickin back with lukery

kickin back time.

tell me about thanksgiving. what do you like to do for thanksgiving? do the expats among you miss it? do you try to recreate it wherever you are?

i only spent a few thanksgivings in the US - one time my gf took me on the WineTrain in Napa Valley - way back when. i think i was living in LA at the time - so i guess that was 93 or thereabouts.

we really don't have anything like thanksgiving here.

7 comments:

profmarcus said...

i came back to the u.s. from argentina this past weds specifically to spend the holidays with family... i spent the past two holiday seasons in buenos aires and, honestly, was greatly relieved to be out of the madness of the holiday season in the u.s. which now starts in september with pressure to buy, buy, buy...

thanksgiving, for me, is mostly good memories, principally of the house filling with the wonderful smells of roasting turkey, and all sorts of special eats, treats, and drinks put out for the special day...

last year, thanksgiving came just before my departure down south and i volunteered to cook the family meal... (i live with my son, his wife, and my two grandsons when i am in the u.s....) i like to cook, and, if i do say so myself, i'm pretty good at it...

i don't care much for sports, so the tradition of thanksgiving football doesn't appeal much to me... the tradition, immortalized in the movie, "a christmas story," of dad sneaking into the kitchen to snatch pieces of crackling turkey skin, however, appeals to me greatly... ;)

i will be remaining here through christmas, and, while i am not looking forward to suffering through another corporate-sponsored consumer orgy, it will be nice to be surrounded by my family...

a thanksgiving of sorts, dia de gracias, is celebrated in argentina, although not nearly as lavishly, and on a different day... turkey is also rarely eaten and not generally available...

one last comment... sandwiches made with leftover turkey, a generous slab of jellied cranberry sauce, mayo, a sprinkling of salt, all on fresh, buttered bread, are to die for...

Anonymous said...

Thanksgiving for football doesn't work for me as much this year. My college team just lost it's last three games of the seson in a pretty disappointing fashion today. Gotta figure out what to give my Mom for her 80th birthday on Tuesday... Riding up with her to my sister's house in L.A. At least not staying in a hotel I won't have the bad juju that I've had while I've been here in San Jose...

On Tuesday night I tried to check into a hotel here in Sunnyvale on Tuesday night, and they told I'd already checked in when I tried to check in. As it turned out, another person with my name (which is NOT a common name) made a reservation for the same hotel on the same date for the same nights and therefore they canceled it as a duplicate. Since they were filled up they had to put me up in a hotel in Mountain View instead for the first night. I'd hoped to meet the guy on Friday before I checked out as I'd never met anyone in the flesh with my name, but he checked out a day earlier. Another officemate of mine from my office in San Diego was in the lobby also completely coincidentally to witness a lot of my discussion the following date when I got a room back in the original hotel. That and nearly bumping into an old boss of mine that I didn't like in the local company cafeteria later that day made things weirder. At least I won't have to worry about a hotel reservation this coming week! :)

I guess one good thing this year is this is the first Thanksgiving in a long while where we can actually celebrate the tradition of being thankful for something (the midterm election results). Hope everyone can feel spiritual about this time in this fashion and not just celebrate the opportunity to get fat on Turkey and camp out to get Playstations or other Black Friday goodies.

lukery said...

o/s "- all of the forced civility, with no presents."
lol

"I stay absolutely stone cold sober - which in my opinion explains why nobody invited me last year."
lol-er

lukery said...

prof - thanks for that - any holiday that brings family together is very sweet. tell em all that lukery says 'hi.'

as i said, we dont really have naything liek thnxgiving here in aust. i guess xmas might possibly a substitute - i'm not saying it's 'bigger' here than elsewhere - but xmas here is also a part of 'summer holidays' - so people travel a lot and visit family and so on. from xmas till the end of jan is basically a holiday here - so it all becomes a part of the same holiday.

lukery said...

i'm surprised that you all mention football as an integral part of 'thnxgiving'

calipendence - that whole hotel thing is fukked up! i've only ever known one 'calipendence ' in my whole life, and now there are two of you in the same hotel on the same nite?

love and happy bday to your mum.

(i cooked my dad's birthday dinner on friday - a recipe from sibel)

Anonymous said...

I used to love Thanksgiving, all the ymmuy food and family, until I started working with Native American Tribes and learned all too graphically the horrible things we did to the hands that fed us that first winter in the colonies. Now the shadow of all of our crimes makes it hard to really enjoy that day. I vary from year to year. This year, I'm fasting. Too much blood on our hands to celebrate.

Anonymous said...

2nd time i'm trying to post this; anyway, the other night, i wrote 'i miss the food, not the neurotic psychotic fam.'