mdlbear | Thanksgiving Day (Reply)

Well, we made it down to Loscon. The flower_cat and I ended up not eating turkey -- the claim is that it's high enough in tryptophan to make you sleepy. She had the prime rib dinner, and I had roast leg of lamb. Both were excellent. The kids split a plate of fettuccini Alfredo, which left super_star_girl enough room for pumpkin pie for desert.

Dinner in the hotel was a bit problematic -- we both opted for appetizers. Colleen had the butternut squash soup off their Thanksgiving dinner menu and it was excellent, and my spicy chicken lettuce wraps were OK but not what I was expecting. Colleen's "satay", though, was plain chicken on skewers with a teriyaki-like dipping sauce, which she loaths, and my "Szechuan ravioli" where leathery and, though hot, basically lacking in flavor. Look, folks -- if you're going to put a well-known dish on the menu, that's what you're supposed to serve.

After dinner I came back up to the room and practiced a little, then paid for a net connection -- at $10/day it's a little pricey, but that's the going rate and it's fast enough. I'm actually writing this on my home system over SSH. Went downstairs briefly with the guitar, hoping to serenade the Cat, but the muzak was annoyingly loud, so I came back upstairs and practiced some more. I'm getting happier with "The Last Train" now that I've figured out good fingerings for all the chords in drop-D tuning. I'm wondering how it would sound with a soprano singing open fifths over it.

I have a lot to be thankful for this year...

We all have our health, more or less. That's the main thing. Our kids are making new friends and trying new things. Our Wolfling daughter is happy in her job; the Younger Daughter seems to be doing well in high school.

My Mom is healthy, and happily moved in to her new digs in NC. I'm still happily employed, and my music "career" is going well despite my usual procrastination.

The Democrats are back in control of Congress, not a moment too soon.

And I wrote a new song yesterday, for the first time in well over a year.

Yes, there have been problems, and setbacks. People have died who we'll miss terribly. The world is still pretty much the sorry, messed-up place it was last year, and though we're all a year older we're mostly not much wiser. But we have family, and friends, and we'll muddle through somehow. It's better than the alternative.