(no subject)

Well, I have to be at work today, but there's not a lot to do. You might suffer through a bunch of entries (if my creativity decides to cooperate).

Galen proved that he has made the mental leap from "I can open this door" to "I can open doors" yesterday. He opened the bathroom door twice - once while the wife was there, once while one of the upstairs neighbor's relatives was using it.

Stupid smart cat...

Random post-turkey day musings

We had a pretty nice, laid-back Thanksgiving. callistotoni was there; the upstairs neighbors cooked the bird and hosted the dinner, while we hosted the before-and-after; and the curvy upstairs neighbor's mom & stepdad, and aunt & uncle came over too. The aunt & uncle collect modern art, so the wife brought out some of her prints. I was optimistically hoping they'd be impressed and buy the lot, but no such insane luck.

Excellent turkey, yummy other dishes, and my second effort at a pecan pie was gooier than the last. Everyone seemed to like it, though. I'm hungry now because I stretched my stomach too far last night... got to get back into the normal range of food consumption. I do have a turkey sandwich for lunch, traditionally enough.

Tin Man

Since it's the holiday season, I started thinking about emotional baggage. Specifically, a cheap tin candy tray I've kept since March 1989.

I'm not a natural athlete. To paraphrase The Tick: you might be on a first-name basis with hand-eye coordination, but I call him Mr. Coordination.

I fenced in college. Foil first, then epee. I enjoyed it - but I'm not sufficiently tall, quick, or coordinated to be very good, so I stopped after graduation.

However, at a match in 1989 everything clicked. I had an "on" day. You've probably had them too. Roger Zelazny put it well, describing a chess match in Unicorn Variation:

"For perhaps twenty minutes, no one could have touched him. He had been shining and pure and hard and clear. He had felt like the best."

That was how it was for me. Everything I tried worked: lunges, parries, even running attacks. When I had a bout with a fencer rated much more highly than me, I destroyed him 10-3. (Yes, I remember the score after all this time.)

I placed second that day. I lost confidence in the finals against the best fencer in the room and he beat me handily. Still, my coach was astonished. The division was too poor for real trophies, so I got a tin candy tray with a hand-written sticker on the back reading "Second Place - Epee". It's cheap, disposable, mass-produced, and unremarkable.

It wouldn't be the only thing I would choose to take if the house were burning down - but it certainly would be in my top ten. Which is why I got mildly peeved when the wife tried to use it for its titular purpose, holding candy. To her it's a waste of space because it sits there collecting dust. She's right.

But to me, regardless of looks, it's a trophy. The one day when every straw I touched was instantly spun into gold. I've never hit that peak again in any physical endeavor. Maybe I never will.

But when I look at that crappy mass-produced piece of tin - I smile. Because I did once. I remember.

What to do with leftover turkey?

Some years ago, my basically-kitchen-impaired aunt hosted Thanksgiving. They didn't like doing that sort of social affair. Maybe my mom guilted them into it - she's good at that. Anyway, my aunt bought a 30-lb. turkey.

For nine people.
Needless to say, they had leftovers. Turkey sandwiches, turkey soup, turkey enchiladas, turkey a la king... turkey meatloaf... turkey pancakes for breakfast... and the absolute rock bottom:
split pea turkey soup. It became the family joke.

So, without further ado, here's the Resolution Recipe on what I did with leftover turkey the day after Thanksgiving.
( Soup, glorious soup! )