Happy belated Turkey Day!

We spent the long weekend at my mom's house in the San Jose, California, area. We arrived on Wednesday just in time to start cooking! Seeing as two of us are fishetarians (fish-eating vegetarians), we had a nice slab of salmon in addition to the inevitable turkey. T, my mom's boyfriend, had the rather effective (plus entertaining) idea to remove the large bones with a pair of pliers (click for the larger image to get the full effect!):

Take that, Alton Brown!

As usual, the table was set in full fall-colored Thanksgiving splendor:

We ate: soup, salmon, turkey, vegetarian stuffing, stuffing from the turkey, candied sweet potatoes, Del Monico potatoes, green beans, salad, and of course, pie! Pecan and pumpkin (which we actually dug into on Wednesday night, dubbed "Thanksgiving Eve." A tasty new tradition has been born!)

We did: Coffeeboy plugged along on his dissertation. We all went wine tasting on Friday, and out to sushi in Los Gatos on Saturday. Several of us went to a woodworking shop and glued together little bumblebee toys the store was donating to homeless children. We spent a good deal of time patting Stinker, our 15 year-old cat who's now blind. We think he has kidney failure and arthritis, and he can only make it halfway up the stairs before he needs a long nap. He's a sweet old cat and I'm glad he made it to this Thanksgiving, as I don't know if he'll be around when next I visit.

We shopped: The only Black Friday shopping I engaged in took place at a LYS I tend to frequent when I visit my mom, Knitting Arts in Saratoga. (There were several other shops I wanted to visit, but I didn't want to bore my relatives. Next time, then!) This store was having a graduated sale, with 30% off if you arrived at 6:30 AM, and 25% off if you arrived between 8:30 and 10:30 am. I discovered the sale at about 9:35 am, and at 9:50 am, my mom and I were in the car, zooming over! Since this coming Sunday is my birthday, my mom offered an early present of yarn:

Mmmmm, pretty colors!

She even wrapped the yarn so I'd have something official to open on the actual day, but she left the ends open in case the security people at the airport needed to look inside. After I "open" them on Sunday, I can show you more than a glimpse!

All in all, it was a restful, enjoyable long weekend. We're back home now, and I'm slowly getting back to the reality of the world and work after exams and conferences and travel - oh my!