Thanksgiving
Nov. 30th, 2008 07:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fenchurchWednesday evening we made the 4+ hour drive over to Colfax on the other side of the state. It was actually a bit weird being back there, since I'd pretty much figured we'd never visit that town again after my last followup appointment with the surgeon! On the plus side, we know the town really well and know where to stay and where to eat.
Thanksgiving dinner was at my Aunt's place down in Clarkston, WA... a town that's not exactly easy to get to. In fact, you have to drive into Idaho and then back into Washington to reach it, due to some rather large cliffs. We ended up having a huge crowd... with my dad, step-mom, aunt and uncle, two of my cousins and their families, plus my cousin's wife's extended family. It made for quite a houseful and for a lot of food (because of course everyone brought stuff to eat). Very funky seeing my cousins again... since it had probably been close to 10 years or so (my oldest cousin has gone from having a full head of very curly hair, to an extremely receding buzzcut -- it's just bizarre!). Even worse, my cousin's kids are now teenagers! How did that happen?!?!
After dinner we drove up to Spokane to check into our hotel for the night (I still haven't shaken this sinus and lung whatever that I've been dealing with, so there's no way I'd want to sleep at my dad's house, since his idea of dealing with my allergy to dogs is to shoo them out of the house for the night (I should add that I'm not all THAT allergic and ordinarily they don't give me too much of a problem)) only to discover that Expedia never bothered to forward our reservation to the hotel, which was, unsurprisingly, completely booked up. We're still not happy with how Expedia dealt with things, since the solution we were given was that they would refund our money and haveanicenight, leaving us basically stranded in a city nearly five hours from home on what is possibly the busiest hotel night of the year. Thankfully, the clerk at the hotel went above and beyond the call of duty and found us a room at a Howard Johnson's a little further in town (I was really worried it would be a dive, since the room price was half what we'd originally been planning to pay for the night, but it was a very nice, older hotel that had obviously been well-maintained and was slowly being updated).
And yes, we did actually hit a few of the Black Friday sales, but NOT at an insane hour of the morning. We spent a leisurely morning at the hotel... I was a bit bummed that the workout room was being remodeled, so I wasn't able to do my bit of daily exercise -- it was nearly done, so the room looked fantastic, but wasn't ready for guests to use yet. Darnit.
About 10:30, we swung by ShopKo to see if they had any of the X-Files DVD sets left, since they were buy one, get one free... but they were completely out. Oh well. Nothing else there was worth dealing with the lines that were left (obviously nothing like they had been... the folks at ShopKo were smart and had the line directions well marked and weaving in and out of aisles). So we headed down to one of my favorite used bookstores, Cal's Paperback Exchange. My dad's been going there since I was 10 and it's always got a good selection, even though it's not a huge store. Even when they don't have what I'm looking for, they've almost always got something I want... and that was the case this time. We went in looking for a particular book for my nephew and ended up buying about a dozen books for ourselves. Oh! And they're carrying DVDs now... and I was able to find a copy of A Dog's Breakfast for $5. I've kind of wanted to see it, after so many of my friends *cough*![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rosiewook*cough* have talked about it, so I figured it was worth the price!
Skipping ahead for a moment, after we got home we ran up to Target in Woodinville and picked up a bunch of stuff... but it was mostly things for us. I got some nice women's Tees (I grabbed a L and a XL to try on and went to try the XL on first before stopping myself and going with the L... which not only fit but was a bit loose. o_O I can tell it's still going to take awhile to change the way I think about myself and the clothes I can wear) and picked up a copy of P.S. I Love You on DVD for $5.98 -- I figured that was worth it for a movie I'd be fastforwarding through just to see James Marsters.
In the end, we didn't even get to see my dad on Friday. He'd had to go into work that day and about an hour before he was going to head home it started snowing. And I mean SNOWING. Rackham and I are both incredibly (and understandably) wimpy when it comes to driving on snow nowadays, so we hightailed it out of there while it was still light out. The snow lasted until a little ways outside of Cheney and we had slushy rain until about Ritzville... with regular old rain pretty much all the way across the state, until we got back home to the Land of Rain, where it was dry. Go figure.
We're thinking of cooking our own Thanksgiving style dinner next Saturday, because it just doesn't seem right to not have any leftovers... I want to have turkey quiche and turkey sandwiches and turkey soup. It doesn't quite feel like the end of November without them!
Hope everyone on my flist in the US had a wonderful Thanksgiving, too!
Thanksgiving dinner was at my Aunt's place down in Clarkston, WA... a town that's not exactly easy to get to. In fact, you have to drive into Idaho and then back into Washington to reach it, due to some rather large cliffs. We ended up having a huge crowd... with my dad, step-mom, aunt and uncle, two of my cousins and their families, plus my cousin's wife's extended family. It made for quite a houseful and for a lot of food (because of course everyone brought stuff to eat). Very funky seeing my cousins again... since it had probably been close to 10 years or so (my oldest cousin has gone from having a full head of very curly hair, to an extremely receding buzzcut -- it's just bizarre!). Even worse, my cousin's kids are now teenagers! How did that happen?!?!
After dinner we drove up to Spokane to check into our hotel for the night (I still haven't shaken this sinus and lung whatever that I've been dealing with, so there's no way I'd want to sleep at my dad's house, since his idea of dealing with my allergy to dogs is to shoo them out of the house for the night (I should add that I'm not all THAT allergic and ordinarily they don't give me too much of a problem)) only to discover that Expedia never bothered to forward our reservation to the hotel, which was, unsurprisingly, completely booked up. We're still not happy with how Expedia dealt with things, since the solution we were given was that they would refund our money and haveanicenight, leaving us basically stranded in a city nearly five hours from home on what is possibly the busiest hotel night of the year. Thankfully, the clerk at the hotel went above and beyond the call of duty and found us a room at a Howard Johnson's a little further in town (I was really worried it would be a dive, since the room price was half what we'd originally been planning to pay for the night, but it was a very nice, older hotel that had obviously been well-maintained and was slowly being updated).
And yes, we did actually hit a few of the Black Friday sales, but NOT at an insane hour of the morning. We spent a leisurely morning at the hotel... I was a bit bummed that the workout room was being remodeled, so I wasn't able to do my bit of daily exercise -- it was nearly done, so the room looked fantastic, but wasn't ready for guests to use yet. Darnit.
About 10:30, we swung by ShopKo to see if they had any of the X-Files DVD sets left, since they were buy one, get one free... but they were completely out. Oh well. Nothing else there was worth dealing with the lines that were left (obviously nothing like they had been... the folks at ShopKo were smart and had the line directions well marked and weaving in and out of aisles). So we headed down to one of my favorite used bookstores, Cal's Paperback Exchange. My dad's been going there since I was 10 and it's always got a good selection, even though it's not a huge store. Even when they don't have what I'm looking for, they've almost always got something I want... and that was the case this time. We went in looking for a particular book for my nephew and ended up buying about a dozen books for ourselves. Oh! And they're carrying DVDs now... and I was able to find a copy of A Dog's Breakfast for $5. I've kind of wanted to see it, after so many of my friends *cough*
rosiewook*cough* have talked about it, so I figured it was worth the price!Skipping ahead for a moment, after we got home we ran up to Target in Woodinville and picked up a bunch of stuff... but it was mostly things for us. I got some nice women's Tees (I grabbed a L and a XL to try on and went to try the XL on first before stopping myself and going with the L... which not only fit but was a bit loose. o_O I can tell it's still going to take awhile to change the way I think about myself and the clothes I can wear) and picked up a copy of P.S. I Love You on DVD for $5.98 -- I figured that was worth it for a movie I'd be fastforwarding through just to see James Marsters.
In the end, we didn't even get to see my dad on Friday. He'd had to go into work that day and about an hour before he was going to head home it started snowing. And I mean SNOWING. Rackham and I are both incredibly (and understandably) wimpy when it comes to driving on snow nowadays, so we hightailed it out of there while it was still light out. The snow lasted until a little ways outside of Cheney and we had slushy rain until about Ritzville... with regular old rain pretty much all the way across the state, until we got back home to the Land of Rain, where it was dry. Go figure.
We're thinking of cooking our own Thanksgiving style dinner next Saturday, because it just doesn't seem right to not have any leftovers... I want to have turkey quiche and turkey sandwiches and turkey soup. It doesn't quite feel like the end of November without them!
Hope everyone on my flist in the US had a wonderful Thanksgiving, too!
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Date: 2008-12-01 04:57 am (UTC)