giving thanks

It’s been a great Thanksgiving.

Granted, the drive up here was hellish. Traffic in Maryland was very, very slow, and the flow didn’t really clear until after the Delaware toll plaza. From there, it was smooth sailing, though we’d lost a lot of time by then. We arrived in Connecticut after 3 am, and I’d hit a second (or third) wind, so I didn’t fall asleep until after 5 am.

So I slept in ’til 10:30, which meant missing a lot of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. But I saw a bit (cheesy as ever – Wynona Judd forgot to lip-sync her part when the NBC cameras trained on her), and enjoyed the late-morning coffee and donuts.

In the afternoon, I did a bit of surgery on my PowerBook, upgrading its internal hard drive from a 40GB unit to a new, quiet 160GB model. I used SuperDuper to clone the 40GB drive to my new drive, which was temporarily housed in an external enclosure. After the cloning, I swapped out the drives, and since then it’s been very nice. I’m especially pleased with the improved power use of the new drive – I was able to squeeze at least 45 minutes more use out of the old ‘Book’s battery, which is saying a lot.

Dinner was really great, too. This year, the prep wasn’t nearly as frenetic as in past years, as a lot of the dishes were cooked ahead of time. So most of the work was in reheating and plating the dishes, all of which turned out great. And we have plenty of leftovers for the next few days – yum!

(And yes, Roly, there was plenty of pie!)

We spent the evening watching the entertaining mockumentary, Pittsburgh, starring Jeff Goldblum, Ed Begley, Jr., Illeana Douglas, and many other notables as…. themselves. It was bizarre, but very entertaining. I’m not sure if sprite or her family felt the same way, though.

Now it’s time to get some sleep. Tomorrow will be laid back. I may shop, may not – the whole “Black Friday” thing isn’t really my thing, as I can find similar deals almost every day through a bit of research, and I don’t like the mindset of rabid shoppers. I was going to go skiing tomorrow, but decided that it would be a good idea to let the resorts make snow tomorrow, as today was a bit warm and hurt the snowpack.

(And one brief bit of political praise – really – for Se. Harry Reid, who refused to put the senate in recess over the holiday break. He did this to prevent Bush from making any recess appointments to open cabinet and other positions. All I can say is kudos, Harry – it’s about time you actually stood up to BushCo!)