Thanksgiving! Again!

A s a kid, Thanksgiving for me used to mean bad food, a whole lot of extended family, and sleeping in the storage cellar at a borrowed beach house. Seriously.

We used to gather at my grandparents house on the Oregon coast, all 20 or 30 of us(I honestly don't really know the count and can't be troubled for it right now). My grandmother would throw together the WORST Thanksgiving dinner know to man, think 20 lb turkey in the microwave for 2 hours and vegetables that aren't done unless they're gray. Not nearly enough room in the house for everyone and definitely not enough service, nuked turkey doesn't eat well on it's own, try getting into it with a plastic knife. Also, you're surrounded by a whole bunch of family that you love dearly individually but together it's one big ass clusterfuck. At the end of it all you still don't know what of the five borrowed beach houses you're stuck in and what cousin or sibling you've got to share a twin bed with. What it all boils down to is that Thanksgiving during my childhood sucked. It was never my favorite holiday, and one I never looked forward to.

As I recall, we almost didn't go to Thanksgiving with Paul and Sean two years ago, Michele's not big on new people and I almost got sucked into a family event(again, we love them, but not on Thanksgiving). Holy hell am I glad we went. Thanksgiving has been my favorite holiday since. Amazing, knock you on your ass food, good drinks, and great people. It's the highlight of my gastronomical year, and this year was no different.

Chipotle meatballs, of course.

It's amazing the amount of prep that goes into getting the boy to the party and ensuring that he doesn't get drunk while Michele does. We were successful at that by the way.

The boy was the source of much amusement and surprisingly well behaved all evening.

Here's to next year!

*I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we've had a few pretty damn good Thanksgivings along the way but none quite compare to the last three, which is the whole point.

Housekeeping

I just found out the RSS feed for The Misadventures of S & M hasn't been working for the last two(!) years. It is now fixed and that's where Michele and I have been posting boy related things. If you're not interested in the boy, well, I'm not even going to tell you what you can do if you're not interested in the boy, it's a little blue, even for me. Seriously though, if you've been reading through a feed reader, it should be fixed now.

Snow Day!

Seattle got it's first snow today(actually, some fell yesterday but it didn't stick at the house so it doesn't count). Also, Michele starts back to work today, but not until this afternoon, so I got a quick ride in while I could. I just started out from the house and headed to Lower Woodland, just like I did when the El M decided to go tits up. TBFKaU held together just fine but was just as brutal to ride as I expected in to be. Sadly, I must admit that I am currently not a singlespeeder, but it's something for me to work towards and I hope to get there soon.

Bike Ninja!

Same spot, different ride.

Some days it's good to be unemployed, some days it's downright awesome. Still miles from downtown and no signs of movement. That's a tough beat for sure.

The Devil Came to Town...

...and fucked up my diet. First, Michele insisted on Salumi on Thursday, then Pat shows up yesterday and wasn't leaving town until we made a visit to Lunchbox Lab.

Today it was Paseo. If I continue to further fuck up my diet by going to Baguette Box tomorrow I'll have completed the Seattle lunchtime superfecta.

Fuck.

Tried to get out for a ride today, just a little one from the house. Got as far as the skate park before things started to go south. First, I whip out the camera to take a couple shots of the empty park and find the screen is completely shattered. The camera still takes pics but there's no way of knowing what the settings are or previewing the shot. I guess nearly four years is a pretty good run for a small camera anymore, but it's still disappointing. At least it gives me an opportunity to learn from past mistakes, the next camera will not use proprietary cables or memory cards, that shit just sucks.

The second shitty thing, just as I was leaving the skatepark and heading up into lower Woodland I heard a big pang and felt my chain jump hard. Upon initial inspection I thought I just didn't have my skewer tight because the wheel had jumped from the dropouts. After popping the wheel back on it was instantly obvious that more was wrong. The wheel was pushed up hard against the drive side chainstay and refused to turn. I walked back to the skatepark to start checking for broken spokes when lo and behold, I found a broken rim. The thing is a good 3/4" out of true and now I'm pissed. A great way for El M and I to celebrate our three year anniversary. So, now I'm in the market for a new rim...

Begging Forgiveness

Once I had Michele and Porter past breakfast I loaded up El M and headed south to South SeaTac for my first ride in a long time. I felt bad for the bike, having neglected it for so long. I've got no excuses, lucky for me the bike was good to me has no hard feelings. It wasn't a long ride by any means, only about 45 minutes or so on the trail but it was really good to get my legs moving. Even though it was a little tough in places where it shouldn't have been and my legs hurt after ten minutes I was surprised by how much it stays with me. I was railing slippery corners at a pretty high rate of speed and clearing obstacles like I never stopped riding. Of course, this is SST we're talking about here and there's not much in the way of difficult terrain, but still, I felt good.

I'm going to attempt to get out a minimum of a couple times a week through the winter, even if that means that I'm occasionally riding (GASP) pavement now and again. Seems like a bit of a feat considering that Michele goes back to work on Monday but I think I can do it. As a matter of fact I think I have to do it. I came home from my ride feeling better than I have since before Porter was born. Like I have a new sense of myself. Reading that last bit back to myself, it sounds really corny and not very "Sean like", I'm not erasing it though. It feels true.

New Leaf

Holy fuck, I'm a father!

On to the next thing. So for the last couple months, when I'm not sleep deprived and delirious, I've been thinking a lot about how I've gotten fat(ter) and slow(er) over the last year and a half or so. It's time to get serious. I'm a week on the diet and it's going well. I expect to hold steady until Thanksgiving(nothing would stop me from throwing away a diet for Thanksgiving dinner, I've been waiting all year after all) and pick up where I left off the next day. I also need to start getting out on the bike more, and not just the Tank. El M and TBFKaU haven't left the basement since we moved except for John and Eithne to borrow. Also, I should get back to blogging a little more, the slow death of TYOTB is unacceptable and I refuse to let it happen.

Okay. Diet, bikes, blog more, I can do this. Really...