My Thanksgiving
I got up at a leisurely hour on Wednesday, and after a long, wasteful shower, I hit the road, getting underway at 11:30 AM. I arrived in Peoria just over six hours later, and I still hate driving. Julia was even later than me, and her trip was almost as long, even though she had roughly one third of the distance to cover. Her mistake was embarking at 3 PM, from Chicago, on the day before Thanksgiving. She was in oozing traffic for hours, before finally being far enough from the city that she could move at a reasonable rate.

I arrived about two hours before she did, and sat with Dad and Amy for drinks and conversation, while we waited for Julia, and in turn, dinner. Julia rolled into town at about 7:30 PM, and we got directly to the business of dinner, before Julia, Dad, and I left for Crusen's on War Memorial to see my cousin Joe's band. We encountered throngs of relatives and almost forgotten grade school friends and acquaintances, as I always do when I go to bars in Peoria. Julia and I called it an early night, and went home to munch on corn chips and watch Conan.

We woke up in the 8 AM neighborhood, the next day, had breakfast with Dad and Amy, got cleaned up, and got out the door for the happenings of the day by about 11:30. We went over to Friar Tuck, the greatest liquor store in central Illinois, and picked up some libations for Thanksgiving dinner at Dianne's house in Chillicothe. Before making the trip we stopped by the Little's house in the Heights for a quick hello, picked up Grandma, and got on our way.

Predictably, nobody in the car knew how to find Dianne's house, so we wandered the streets of Chillicothe for a couple turns before I insisted that Julia make the call.

We wound up staying the latest, rounding off the evening with a great game of Balderdash. Some highlights:

Cannalure: Country Joe MacDonald's ill-fated heavy metal project, referred to by "Strangling Cats" magazine as, "audio sin."

Marpunkee: Dentistry-deprived town in western India incorrectly credited as the "birthplace of torture."

Hircismus: Persian bouyancy critic who advised Xerxes to "just get stoned."

Circontepsis(or something like that): The Haitian procedure of regurgitating orange rinds prior to burning lost tourists.

The next day, Julia amd I went to see the new Harry Potter movie, which we both enjoyed. After that, I went and hung out with friends and relatives at the Red Barn, which is the closest bar to my high school. Interestingly, I had never been there before.

I left at about 11:30, the next day, and averaged 71 miles per hour, over 5 hours and 41 minutes.

Gulia blurted:
Okay...where are the pics?

3:00 PM, Dec 5, 2005

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