I don’t really like neglected my blog, mostly because I scowl at the idea of somehow “wasting” the money I pay to host it.  I guess I’ll still hosting it, but not really using it per se.  Eh.

Thanksgiving has come and gone, but not without its distinct impression that it left on our collective stomachs.  Many people likely had to cut back this year and not have an extravagent holiday, though that wasn’t the case for my family–mostly because we never do an extravagent holiday to begin with.  Sure, we do the turkey and the stuffing and the mashed potatoes, but I’ve seen some spreads that have dwarfed ours for as many or fewer people.

Hanne and I decided that we wanted to host Thanksgiving dinner this year, and that worked out much better than I could have anticipated, just like the meal itself.  We managed to squeeze seven people around our table with the leaf in, and though we had no room on the table for serving dishes, I don’t think people minded serving themselves in the kitchen.  The turkey was perfectly done, the mashed potatoes were creamy and delicious, the two kinds of stuffing both tasted great, and Hanne’s two pies (pumpkin–from scratch–with a layer of crushed hazelnuts on the crust and apple with gruyere baked into the crust) were, in a word, divine.  As she was baking them the night before, I kept thinking about the TV show “Pushing Daisies” with the piemaker lead character, and I kept spouting out “The facts were these….” before many comments, ala the narrator of the show.  Hanne was already annoyed with me for a variety of reasons, but my girlfriend was baking pie.  It was great.

We managed to keep most of the insanity under control by making a lot of things ahead of time so that that span of time between when the turkey is nearing completion and when you actually serve up wasn’t so crazy, but I was sweating by the time I finally sat down to eat with everyone, both from stressing out a bit as well as the quite warm kitchen.  My reputation, after all, was on the line.

Thanksgiving also breeds monumental amounts of leftovers, as well, but I think that Hanne and I have managed to keep things under control.  The last of the pie was eaten yesterday, the cranberry sauce has maybe one sandwich left to go (though I need to make some more to use up cranberries), the olive appetizers were finished last night, and the remainder of the turkey and most of the stock will get used up tonight in a delicious risotto I have planned: turkey, red and green bell peppers, mushrooms, fennel, and onion.  Delicious.  That will leave perhaps two cups of stock to deal with, and Hanne wants to use those this weekend to make some ravioli with the squash we also have on hand.

Most of the leftover turkey went towards making a big (and I mean big) batch of turkey chili Sunday night, which while very good (and somewhat spicy) burned the hell out of the room of my mouth.  Still, it was worth it.  Five kinds of beans, a pound and a half of turkey, lots of stock, collard greens, tomatoes, onion, chili peppers…it turned out much better than I expected.  Not that my expectations were low, mind you, but they exceeded them nonetheless.  I had it simmer with the lid on for an hour and a half, so by the time it had boiled down and was ready to serve, the turkey was falling apart it was so soft.  Last night I used some of that leftover chili and made turkey enchiladas, so at least the meals are cycling around.

We also took care of Hanne’s parents’ (well, technically also hers I suppose) dog Quinn for a week while her parents were back in Plymouth, and that was definitely an interesting time.  Having the dog around our (relatively) small apartment was fun, though I will not miss the clackity-clack of her claws on our wood floors all the time.  We still have a lot of cleaning to do, and I suspect that this weekend will involve a great deal of that.  There are dog hairs everywhere, and there are at least two rooms that are in desperate need of mopping, too.

Other than the craziness that began with Thanksgiving (and won’t let up until after New Year’s), things are going very well.  My Christmas beer, which is unfortunately still sitting in a fermenter and is about two weeks past when I should have bottled it, tastes delicious (I sampled it when I moved it to the new fermenter) and should be ready just in time for gift-giving.  Also on the topic of beer, I’m knocking off work early today (with the blessings of my supervisors) and attending this year’s Holiday Ale Festival, a tradition that I look forward to with mixed feelings every year.  I always enjoy tasting the unique winter beers, but man, it’s so crowded in that tent in Pioneer Square.  I hope that by going at 2 PM on a Thursday the lines and crowds with be less than they usually are.  There are a number of beers I want to try this year–like every year–and I think I even have some ticklets left over from last year to boot!

On Friday, Hanne and I plan on making the rounds at a couple of brewpubs to try the winter seasonals at both the New Old Lompoc brewpub and well as Laurelwood, both up on NW 23rd, conveniently located just a few blocks from one another.  Lompoc has six–count ‘em, six–winter seasonal beers to try, and we’ll kick those off today with the one that’s only available at the Holiday Ale Festival.  I dig it when breweries brew a beer especially for a festival.

Work’s going just fine, despite my gloom-and-doom post regarding the possibilities of starting to block various activities from work.  As it turned out, the whole discussion was hypothetical and nothing was/will be done about it, but I made my feelings clear on the subject, I think.  It’s something I feel very passionate about, clearly.  We have a lot of projects upcoming that should really change how the firm operates both on a daily basis as well as on the back-end, and I’m excited about each and every one of them to tell you the truth.  I like progress, and while I’ve been reminded that this firm moves at exactly two speeds (slowly and not at all), behind the scenes we have much greater leeway to move at faster speeds as long as the user experience doesn’t change.  I’m particularly excited about setting up a new terminal server so that people can work remotely because the one we have needs to be led out back and shot.  We’re moving to a mostly virtual server environment at my urging, and it’s pretty cool to see such a major shift in how things operate behind the scenes at my urging.

In short, everything’s just dandy.