So where was I?

Actually, during the blogless period last week I was in the house, but I didn't go near the computer more than a couple of times. Too many relatives in the house, from Jen's cousin Frank to her brothers Mike and Joe, Joe's wife Alane and their two kids, Jesse and Mandy, our son Steve, nephew Tom, and a few others who drifted in and out from time to time. We ate too much and drank too much, but generally had a good time. Went to the Chargers game in San Diego on Sunday (they lost ignominiously, 22-16, to an Atlanta team that is pretty good but whom they should have beaten; LT didn't seem himself)

On Thanksgiving Day we went out for dinner, and most of us didn't even order turkey. It was wonderful not to have to spend two hours-plus cleaning up the mess. I think maybe we've had enough Thanksgiving dinners in our house to suit us (last year we lost power and had to take the turkey to Angie's house to finish cooking it and it was overdone; a memorable disaster we can laugh about now).

Just to give this a mildly political/philosophic spin, here's Gary Galles with this year's retelling of the New England pilgrims' story, from LewRockwell.com.

Happy Thanksgiving 2001

Here's a link to the Register's editorial yesterday for Thanksgiving. Cathy chose to reprint the Thanksgiving editorial we ran in 2001, when the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were still fresh in everybody's minds, and the ill-advised Patriot Act had already been passed. If I do say so myself, I think it holds up reasonably well.

Memorable Thanksgiving

Well, it was certainly an unusual Thanksgiving around our house. The plan was dinner for 12. We had just put the turkey in the oven -- all right, it had been in an hour and a half -- when the power went out. After it didn't come on for a while, we finally decided we'd have to take it to our sister-in-law's house, about three miles away. As the girls were heading out, they saw the ambulances and police cars right near the end of our block, and stopped to ask some questions. It turns out a hang glider -- they jump off the mountain above our house; the thermals in Elsinore are suppposed to be terrific -- landed on the power lines. I didn't go out and get a newspaper this morning, so I still don't know if he survived.

Anyway, we heard the power was expected to be back on at 3:00, then around 6:00, then 8:00 or 9:00. It finally came on at 12:30, after midnight. Fortunately we always have lots of candles, so we had dinner more or less as scheduled and it even tasted pretty good. We had made all the desserts in the morning. It will be a story to tell every Thanksgiving from now on.