It’s a glorious peach sunset here, one of those sky blue pink affairs, in the aftermath of the latest rain (most of the day,) and they say it’s going to be blue and scattered cloudy tomorrow, before snow sets in for the weekend—and Jane and I are going to take it easy a day: the two figures Jane wants to use in her plan to continue the Gate of Ivrel graphic one day have arrived—she’s virtuously refused to open them until Thanksgiving—and it’s just time to take a day and relax.
We’ll probably be online, on and off, so to speak—and we hope you have as nice a day (and coming weekend) as we intend to! We’ve laid in a supply of cream pie, pumpkin pie, we have ham, we have sweet potatoes and squash, and we are just going to indulge—just for a day or so.
And a happy Thanksgiving to you and Jane! We had amazing weather today in KC — almost 70 degres, and I spent a happy few minutes in the fall garden picking a few things for a centerpiece. Otherwise, the cranberry sauce is done, pumpkin baked and bread made, and EriGuy has prepped the green bean casserole, stuffing, and birds. Tomorrow’s ritual will be mimosas with breakfast, a brief brining of the birds, then pop everything in sequence in the oven for a late lunch. EriGuy and dogs will be snoozing by midafternoon.
Have a great thanksgiving day, too, CJ and Jane! The weather is clear tonite, and cold! Hope tomorrow will be nice too… My sweetie has from today till Monday off, so we’ll be enjoying some time together. Since neither of us like to cook, we’ll probably eat at Sizzler’s for dinner tomorrow. Sizzler’s has a nice salad bar to add to the turkey dinner, so that works for us!
Mmmmmm, ham… *drool*
We are hosting Thanksgiving dinner for several friends tomorrow. I’m making a turkey with smashed potatoes and gravy, one of our friends makes killer stuffing, and there is Pumpkin Crunch for dessert. I anticipate a couple of vegetable dishes coming to supplement the other things; if not, I can make creamed spinach. The potluck Thanksgiving dinner has been slowly growing the last few years, we are up to 12 this year. I anticipate merry mayhem. Happy Thanksgiving, one and all!
Sister is going to the in-laws, and I won’t suffer the consequences of over-indulging! 😉 That’s a good thing. 🙂
Memorable Thanksgiving for Sandy’s victims, but I hope they have something to be thankful for. Perhaps not having to build there again?
We’re putting on a feast tomorrow – bird and what not. Mashed turnips, too, as something different this year. I have to thank the folks at Shejidan for alerting me to the delicious there.
Our weather’s been…actually I don’t know. I’ve been inside for three days, with some kind of cough that has also taken my voice for the nonce. It’s not too bad, and is apparently a wide spread viral affliction throughout the South right now. I have no idea if it’s just a cold-type virus or a flu. Doesn’t seem like flu to me, I never even had a noticeable fever.
Happy Thanksgiving to you all though! Taking it easy sounds like a wondermous thing indeed. I get to start cleaning like mad on Friday though, because we’re heading out on a big vacation – two weeks in Walt Disney World, woohoo! – but that means I gotta leave the house decently clean, or I’ll come back to insects demanding rent from me! Hah!
My mom is making Thanksgiving dinner this year for some long-time family friends who are moving to Atlanta live with their oldest son, my BFF (both of her parents are dead now and her brother lives in another city) and me. It will be bittersweet. My dad is at the stage where I wonder if this will be the last Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc., we’ll spend together. I’ve made up my mind to just take it one day at a time and savor the moments.
My mom makes *the* best cornbread stuffing, of course, so there’s that, and turkey, and green bean casserole, and mashed taters with giblet gravy. All of the invited guests have been friends with us forever, and we always have such fun together. I suspect there will be football involved. . .
And a safe, sane, and very happy holiday to one and all filled with fun, fellowship, and all the best goodies!
Happy Thanksgiving!
I missed on early prep of cornbread for the stuffing, so I’ll do it overnight or whenever I wake up. I *slept* today, the longest continuous sleep I’ve had in months. It was so worth it. I’ve decided to do what suits me tomorrow, meal and relaxing. If I am as ambitious as I plan, then there’ll be stuffing, wassail, salad with avocado, maybe a mince pie, and either roast or fish, depending on my mood. I didn’t think to get Brussels sprouts to roast, and I don’t think I have any. But I will be happy with whatever I fix. I’ve had so much chicken lately, and it’s just me, so a turkey didn’t appeal. Either ham or something non-traditional come Christmas.
The cats will be no end puzzled and curious about all the goings-on in the kitchen. They’ve become used to my bursts of activity or my computer time. 🙂 So it’ll be entertaining for them and for me, as they try to figure this out.
I doubt I’ll put up a tree this year. I’ll be happy if I get the house ship-shape, in case cousins visit at Christmastime.
I’ll be online a bit over Thanksgiving and the next day. I’ll check in at blogs and such and say howdy. 🙂
Oh — and I have a fun surprise in mind, after seeing something food-wise in, of all things, the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles CGI cartoon. I haven’t looked into how to fix those yet, but it sounds good. Hint: Chines-Japanese-Italian fusion cuisine. LOL!
Happy Thanksgiving and have a nice, quiet, calm day!
Russ and I are having our first holiday together in five years. We’re due for a bad wind storm tomorrow and a horrible drop in temp (still no heating in my house again this year), but I am still looking forward to it.
Oh, and we had a lovely sunset tonight, too: http://zettepicaday.blogspot.com/#!/2012/11/against-fall-of-night.html
The sky and the trees are gorgeous — but I really love the picture of the boys with Buffy and friend.
A very strong red in that sunset, beautiful. I like the little house finches too – didn’t know that’s what they should be called, I thought those were sparrows. I’ve got a bunch of them hanging around my garden every winter (13 at last count), a few less in summer. They used to love the old plum tree in the back garden, but even now it’s gone they still seem to prefer hanging out in the remaining small tree and bushes in my garden at least part of every day, waiting for their turn on the feeding stations.
Zette, now I’ve got my ereader working again (even if it’s still buggy) I wanted to go looking for the new book you said you’d finished a while back, but I’ve lost the link to your site where the books were. There’s still plenty in my ‘to be read’ pile but would you mind giving the link again? I’ve still got the ‘Silky’ books to go, but I’ve read several of your stories and liked them. Ada Nish Pura is my current favourite, of the ones I’ve read so far.
I love the house finches too… we have a number of them around the house in summer, but they seem to leave come the cooler weather, but for a wonderful surprise this year, we not only have the usual junkos, bush tits and chickadees, but a flock of white and golden crowned sparrows. I’ve seen the white crowns around, but this is the first year I’ve noticed the golden crowned… very pretty birds!
AAAAIIIEEE! Those are house sparrows. I don’t know why I called them finches. I do know the differnce. I had another picture with the same problem and I’ve corrected it as well.
This is a male house fince. Far different little creature: http://zettepicaday.blogspot.com/search?q=finch#!/2011/04/from-for-blog-house-finch.html
Thanks for the story title, Hanneke. Now I know the name of the author! I know there are authors in the crowd, but it’s kinda hard to find works to peruse when you have neither author’s name, nor titles! From the blurb on Amazon, Ada Nish Pura sounds intriguing. Payday is next week. . .
Thank you Hanneke! I’m glad you enjoyed Ada Nish Pura. I hear very little back on that one, though I like it too! (grin)
This is the link to my Smashwords page. I generally send people there because, unlike the Kindle and Nook sites, you can get my free stories as well:
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/zette
And since Smashwords does all sorts of ebook versions, it makes it easier than asking what everyone has. If you are on Amazon or Barnes and Noble (Or Sony or Kobo) you can just check for Lazette Gifford. That’s the joy of having a rather unusual name.
I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t updated my home site or my ACOA pages lately mostly because I had a huge amount of work suddenly when the site for writers I own (Forward Motion for Writers) suddenly had to change from our clunky out-of-date system to something new because the old system would no longer pass the php rules. And this month has been NaNoWriMo, which I adore and just refused to miss.
December is going to be get caught up on everything month, I think.
Thank you again! I hope you like more of them.
Thanks, Zette and Hanneke. I’ll check Smashwords when I’m next on my laptop. Kat Among the Pigeons is still on my To Read pile, but I may be gaining on it.
Relatives here; extra hands to help with dinner fixings, so I expect a semi-relaxed day! Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!
Happy Thanksgiving! I am thankful to have you and Jane as friends!
And a Happy Thanksgiving to you and Jane.
Proge is roasting turkey on the grill and I am doing most of the rest…..a quiet, ‘foodie’ day ahead. The weather has been beautiful with afternoon temps in the mid 50’s. A walk to the beaver pond is in store for the week end.
I will be taking my Mom and Dad over to my youngest surviving brother’s for Thanksgiving dinner. It’s also a bittersweet time, since one brother’s birthday was October 31 and the other’s was November 28. I still have 3 surviving brothers, and thankful for all of them.
WOL, one wishes a most enjoyable Thanksgiving to you especially, and to everyone in general.
CJ & Jane, I hope your day is also wonderful there in Smoked Ham.
Thank you for the kind wishes, joekc6nlx. It was a lovely day. The food was fabulous (especially the turkey, sunshine salad, and cornbread dressing), the company was delightful, and it was a special day. Hope yours was wonderful, too.
Overindulge in moderation.
Whew! A little breathing room! The cornbread was made and the dressing (stuffing) is now baking. I fixed steak instead of roast. Either is a treat these days. Another 15 min. or so and it’ll be ready. I forgot to thaw the cranberries I’d frozen and didn’t fix the wassail. Hah, tomorrow! I’m quite happy with this. It couldn’t have turned out better if I’d tried. No hassle or rush…don’t know how I managed that, sheer luck, baji-naji, it must be. Heck, I even have the cooking prep dishes washed up. I might even be getting used to this. (OK, to be honest, without a turkey to prep, it’s really pretty easy.)
Everyone have a great Thanksgiving. Enjoy company and the noise and quiet thereafter.
Satisfied, here. I’ll be poking around blogs later.
All in all, I think there’s much to be thankful for. We’ve a respite from much that made the past year so unpleasant. Yes, some still are self-centered, fearful of what they can’t see, but they’ll always be with us–they are us, some of us. Despite Sandy’s diabolical left-hook, things certainly could have been worse. We have more joyful freedom. I remember Thanksgivings I was far less sanguine about! 🙂
Only in Spokane: police get called: it’s turkeys staging a riot…
http://www.krem.com/news/Police-called-to-South-Hill-turkey-squabble-180513001.html
Not “only”.
“Wild turkeys overrun Brookline, Mass.”
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/wild-turkeys-overrun-brookline-mass-222025142–abc-news-topstories.html
“Brookline police say complaints about wild turkeys in the town have doubled in the past two months, according to CBS Boston. One officer said he spends nearly every morning protecting students at Brookline High School from the turkeys.”
Hysterical. The domestic toms can be pretty aggressive, too.
And they’re not too bright. The wild ones get along, but, illustrating the smarts of the domestic—my mum’s best friend, as they exited their one room school, took a look at the sky and begged help, because her parents weren’t home; and the oncoming storm didn’t look good. They went to that house (diffference of 10 oclock versus noon in direction) and, as the storm hit, started trying to herd turkeys into the shed. The rain and hail began to pelt down, and the remaining birds stood transfixed in the poultry yard, staring up at the sky. Mum and Irene grabbed a washtub, loaded each fat bird in and hauled them to the shed, one after another—the parents had meanwhile rushed home, discovered two half-drowned girls and all the turkeys safe, so Mum stayed for dinner, after a phone call to her folks, and got driven home after the storm, warm and dry.
I hope you don’t mind me quoting this little anecdote. (If you do, I’ll gladly remove it.)
http://theowlunderground.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/really-wild-turkeys/
Lol—go for it. Nicely done!
A beautiful fall day here – 15C (59F) and sunny. But tonight’s low is tomorrow’s high: 8C, and then it goes down to -2C (28F) tomorrow night. Of course that’s makes it perfect for a good game of Canadian football, if they would just leave the SkyDome open 🙂 The Grey Cup game closes the Canadian season, because it really does get too cold to play outdoors, especially on the prairies!
I think I shall go out and get some Maple Smoked Ham.
Oh dear, I’m sure there is a difference between ruckus and raucous – it seems to have escaped that writer 😀
Happy Thanksgiving to all southern folk!
Hope everyone had a wonderful, safe holiday. Ate too much, but that’s traditional too. Did try something totally new — got myself an electric pressure cooler a coulple months ago and made stock using a smashed turkey carcass. Odd to be in my fifties and never have done soup before (never had a pressure cooler before either), but really looking forward to turkey, veggie and noodle soup! Got motivated when my cousin John treated us to homemade turkey soup after we had Canadian Thanksgiving with the family this last October in Vancouver–such a wonderful time we all had!
Thanks to Ready, WOL, or WoW for recommending the “Going Medieval” History Channel special. That was really good viewing. — I’m sorry I don’t recall for sure which of you recommended it. I looked back at Jane’s and CJ’s blogs, but didn’t find your post. On Jane’s, iirc.
reports of killer turkeys are also coming in from California
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Wild-Turkeys-Taking-Over-Bay-Area-Suburbs-180416481.html
We may be in trouble, people. 😉