Thanksgiving report 1
Nov. 28th, 2017 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
choco_froshMonday morning, I spent a few minutes cleaning one of my shoes before I headed for work. "So what's that black stuff on it?" I imagined someone saying.*
Well, the black stuff was ash, from a small bonfire, and I'd gotten my shoe smeared with it by standing so close to the fire that I was practically in it. It was Thanksgiving morning: the notional temperature was maybe 35 degrees, and the west wind was blowing over the valley and then apparently hitting the bluff on the opposite side and looping down and back, over the Sheepscot (becoming damp as well as cold in the process), and blowing right into our faces. I'm hot-blooded and was wearing about five layers of clothing (all of which were rapidly getting impregnated with woodsmoke) and I was still cold. Unless I was so close to the fire that I was getting ash on my shoes, anyway.
The riverbank below Bob's** house is the traditional place for my Dad's friends to gather on Thanksgiving morning for wine and cheese; and this is far from the coldest weather they've held it in. My brother and I drove up from Portland that morning (a pretty drive) talking about rap music, revelations of sexual harassment (the phrase "partially in uniform" became the tagline of the day), the inevitable intersection between the two, and everything else on earth, so that we could see Dad, even if we'd decided to do Thanksgiving dinner separately. We got there early - we had a turkey to cook once we got home, after all - so for a bit it was just us and Dad and our host. Bob was (typically) just getting out of his canoe to build up the fire, and the two of us wound up talking about the river, and the beavers across the way. Dad does all the wine-selection for this event, so he was setting THAT up: a big table with probably a dozen kinds of wine, some of this year's even more epic cider-pressing, and enough wine glasses for the several dozen people who would be dropping in in the course of the morning.
The other table - covered with even more varieties of cheese, plus smoked fish, sausage, and bread-products to eat them all on - was thus left alone and unloved. My brother and I soon fixed that.
More later.
* I mean, not that we're strict enough about the dress code that anyone would probably notice, but...
** Insane sailor/marine biologist/punster. One of the stars of that epic cider pressing I attended while I was getting divorced, which doesn't seem that long ago even though we're all six years older.
Well, the black stuff was ash, from a small bonfire, and I'd gotten my shoe smeared with it by standing so close to the fire that I was practically in it. It was Thanksgiving morning: the notional temperature was maybe 35 degrees, and the west wind was blowing over the valley and then apparently hitting the bluff on the opposite side and looping down and back, over the Sheepscot (becoming damp as well as cold in the process), and blowing right into our faces. I'm hot-blooded and was wearing about five layers of clothing (all of which were rapidly getting impregnated with woodsmoke) and I was still cold. Unless I was so close to the fire that I was getting ash on my shoes, anyway.
The riverbank below Bob's** house is the traditional place for my Dad's friends to gather on Thanksgiving morning for wine and cheese; and this is far from the coldest weather they've held it in. My brother and I drove up from Portland that morning (a pretty drive) talking about rap music, revelations of sexual harassment (the phrase "partially in uniform" became the tagline of the day), the inevitable intersection between the two, and everything else on earth, so that we could see Dad, even if we'd decided to do Thanksgiving dinner separately. We got there early - we had a turkey to cook once we got home, after all - so for a bit it was just us and Dad and our host. Bob was (typically) just getting out of his canoe to build up the fire, and the two of us wound up talking about the river, and the beavers across the way. Dad does all the wine-selection for this event, so he was setting THAT up: a big table with probably a dozen kinds of wine, some of this year's even more epic cider-pressing, and enough wine glasses for the several dozen people who would be dropping in in the course of the morning.
The other table - covered with even more varieties of cheese, plus smoked fish, sausage, and bread-products to eat them all on - was thus left alone and unloved. My brother and I soon fixed that.
More later.
* I mean, not that we're strict enough about the dress code that anyone would probably notice, but...
** Insane sailor/marine biologist/punster. One of the stars of that epic cider pressing I attended while I was getting divorced, which doesn't seem that long ago even though we're all six years older.
