The Anti-Holiday

Fly Boy

This Thanksgiving we opted out. We didn't cook or invite people over. This picture is of me on Thanksgiving Day doing "the airplane" with Connor, like I have been doing with him since he was a baby. From the look of things, I won't have many more years of being able to lift him. This was the first year that he offered to "fly" me, so I took him up on it. His 10-year-old legs are not as strong as he thinks they are and the result was that his legs slowly collapsed under my weight and he pretty much begged for mercy. I win (sort of). After I crushed him, we went to Steak and Ale with the padres for some anti-turkey and we stopped by Caryn and Matt's for our one taste of a traditional Thanksgiving celebration, desert at their super-sized family Thanksgiving dinner. There were parents, sisters, cousins, kids - you name it. I got to taste Chess Pie for the first time and I got to take home a piece of my all time favorite - pecan pie. Caryn made a wonderful pecan pie, for which I heartily thank her! In addition to having a beautifully symmetric pie top with pecan halves laid out in perfect intervals, it was also exactly the right texture and the flavor was superb. Did I mention that I LOVE pecan pie?

I took the week off and spent it with my wonderful nephew, Connor. We talked, listened to music, read, and watched some B horror flicks (Night of the Living Dead and The Last Man on Earth). I find that the older he gets, the more I enjoy introducing him to relics and pop iconography from my youth. He's is an absolute sponge for whatever he is discovering,and he can relate almost anything back to an episode of The Simpsons. We listened to the classic rock cable station while we read and when The Who came on I was telling him about Roger Daltrey swinging his microphone and Pete Townshend smashing his guitar and he got excited and said, "Hey, these guys were on The Simpsons when they divided the town!" He also recognized Paul McCartney from the vegetarian episode. I never really thought of how that show is the equivalent of the History Channel for the Y Generation.