It is the Monday after the long Thanksgiving weekend. It is a time when most people have four straight days off. For me, I always have images of it being a very relaxing time where I can just sit on the couch, read, play games with the boys and consume various media. However, my image is always wrong: The four days are filled with all kinds of busyness that I had forgotten about from previous Thanksgiving weekends.
The first day off is Thanksgiving and I’m busy preparing the food for most of the morning as well as straightening up the house. The turkey is always large so must be in the oven by 10:00 AM so it is ready to take out at 4:00 PM, rest and carve. Once the turkey comes out things get really busy because the oven is now free for the stuffing and gravy is made from the turkey drippings. Therefore, most of the cooking happens when the turkey comes out of the oven and in the hour before we eat.
Everyone comes over around 1:00 so from 1 – 4 we’re chatting and drinking wine. It is always a fun time with adults catching up and kids running around the house. I like to take plenty of pictures and video so I can look back on previous Thanksgivings and reminisce. People come and go from your life and Thanksgiving especially is a perfect time marker since we often have a lot of people over.
On Friday we all wake up rather late and then clean up from the party. One family stayed the night at our house and most of the following day. The kids were able to play together another day and had a lot of fun. I don’t even remember exactly what I did but I got a workout in, and did a lot of puttering around the house.
Saturday we decorated pretty much all day. I put up the tree and the kids decorated it. The biggest challenge of the day was putting up Christmas lights during cold and rainy weather: there is an atmospheric storm coming through and the rain has continued into this week. In previous years I had tried the 3M sticky hooks but those never stuck well when exposed outdoors. So the past couple years I’ve used tape but that can take off the paint and generally isn’t a very good solution. I’m unable to nail in hooks because the outside of our house is a composite material that is very hard.
So this year I decided I’d just super glue on the transparent 3M hooks. Since they are transparent they aren’t easily visible and superglue should definitely do the job. It was a bit tricky putting them up during a wet day but I got it done and it worked. I must have been outside for 2-3 hours and was hoping I wouldn’t catch a cold as I’ve got a lot of work functions this week.
After the outdoor lights I still wasn’t done and had to set up our Christmas village as well as the indoor Christmas lights. I got all that completed and was finally done around 5. Then we had Brandon and family over for dinner since it had been a long time since we had gotten together with them.
On Sunday the wife volunteered at the annual Japanese language test so was gone all day. This is the same government issued test that is used throughout Japan for various things but especially if you want to work for a Japanese company. When I was studying Japanese there were levels N1 – N4. N3 and 4 were very easy for me and I think I could have passed N2. Now there are five levels, N1 – N5. I’m pretty sure I could still pass N3 but I would definitely fail N2. I think after all these years I’d like to try the test but I’ll have to get motivated to study. That motivation to open up a Japanese grammar book hasn’t been around in a long time.
Since the boys and I were alone we played Fortnite, Yoshi’s Crafted World and Mario Odyssey in the morning. I got a workout in and then we went for ramen at Momiji. We had to wait for about 25 minutes since it was the busier than usual due to the holiday weekend. After that it was back home, shower and wait for the wife to come home. We tried watching Avatar again since Brandon and family really enjoyed the Avatar ride at Disney World and thus got us thinking about the movie. Well, I had forgotten how much I hate that movie. I even wrote a post about it when it first came out. Basically it is bumbling American army guy goes and saves the hapless natives, sleeps with a pretty one and becomes their hero. Makes me want to pluck my eyes out.
Well, after a lull the rain is back in full force and I need to get back to work.
