Humbug.  I’m slipping into a Holiday-induced slump already.  Nothing but downhill from here.  I don’t even have anything specific to complain about, just a general sense of malaise.  Actually, I didn’t have a bad weekend at all.  Actually, I didn’t have a bad week at all.  Backing all the way up to last Wednesday, I met up with a merry band of elderly gentlemen down at the Brooksider for the annual AKL Alumni Luncheon.  This event originated as a football game many years (decades) ago, but as we all aged and became increasingly incapable of exercise it slowly degenerated into a lunch event.  Much more relaxing I must say.  It was a well-attended event this year;  I believe at one point there were 21 guys around the table.

Thursday was the official holiday, as I remember.  Unfortunately, still being oncall, I was relegated to the confines of my house.  I made the best of it though.  Threw a turkey on the smoker, and made sides of green rice casserole, mashed ‘taters and gravy, and kale with smoked turkey.  It was a pretty solid meal, if slightly non-traditional in the sense we were by ourselves, and didn’t have any pie.  (Oops.  My bad.)  One of Donette’s nephews was kind enough to drive us down some deviled eggs to correct that oversight, luckily.

Friday ended up a rather unplanned day of shopping.  It began with a somewhat benign oil-change appointment, and started going south when I decided to kill some time by walking around the showroom floor.  Eventually, I ran home and got Donette and we ended up test-driving four different vehicles.  (None of which we have purchased so far.)  It was oddly entertaining;  I generally despise car salesmen, not to mention driving in general.  After that we hit a few malls, still on the hunt for the elusive dutch oven deal.  Alas, no purchases were made to that end either.  Exhausted from my thoroughly unproductive day, I spent the rest of the evening at the Brooksider with The Guys, detailing our respective holiday adventures.

Saturday and Sunday are something of a black hole;  I can’t really remember what I did.  I’m sure it was very fun, not to mention rewarding.  Or maybe it wasn’t.  Everyone will be relieved to know I did finally decide on a dutch oven.  I actually ended up ordering one directly from the Le Creuset site, after getting an email that they were running some after-Thanksgiving sales.  Don’t actually have it in my hands yet, but presumably it is somewhere over the ocean at this writing.  I see a large pot of turkey soup in my near future.