I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.  Ours was all good; Even the grilled turkey experiment turned out favorably.  It only took 3 hours, kept the stove freed up for other stuff, and didn’t make the mess of deep-frying one.  After dinner we took a quick nap and then headed down to Todd’s, where we watched the Plaza Lighting from the relative safety of his living room.

Friday was a work day, albeit not much of one.  I managed to get Gabe in to the Vet, as his horrible tummy issue from last week wasn’t magically going away.  Poor lil’ guy, it got so bad we couldn’t stand to have his stinky butt in the same room.  Not remarkably, it turned out he had another one of his intestinal infections.  (Like anybody in the same zip code couldn’t diagnose THAT one.)  They gave him a few shots and sent him home with some medicine, a can of industrial air freshener, and a hefty bill.

Saturday I went over to a neighbor’s house and worked on his PC issue most of the morning.  He’d been unable to connect to the Internet for a few weeks, presumably because of a suspect email he’d clicked a while back.  After at least an hour of head-scratching, we found out that the problem wasn’t a virus, but that his wireless card was turned off.  Literally, there was a little switch on the bottom of his laptop that had been inadvertently set to “off.”  Clicked it to “on,” and the mysterious connectivity problem was solved.  Good grief.  After that humbling experience, I headed over to Microcenter and bought a few of their big “sale” items.  Nothing too spectactular, I just felt I needed to contribute my little part to the post-Thanksgiving economy.  The miserable drive from Wornall to Metcalf via 95th street reminded of two very important words though;  “Online Shopping.”  Henceforth, I declare that if I can’t get it in Brookside, Waldo, or online, I don’t really need it.  Later in the evening, we headed to Northtown for Schmidt’s 40th birthday party.  It was a surprise party, and a well-disguised one at that;  He’s not 40, and it wasn’t his birthday.  Sneaky.  Hey, that’s one way to catch somebody off guard.

Sunday I spent the better part of the afternoon making a pot of gumbo from the leftover Thanksgiving turkey.  It came out much better than my last pot… I’m starting to get the method down.  I think I will call gumbo-making my winter project.  It serves lots of good purpose;  Keeps the leftovers down, makes the house smell good, and roux-stirring seems to be the only exercise I can do these days without hurting myself.  Sad, but true.  I had to work Sunday night, so the rest of the day was spent dreading that.  Kind of a day-killer.