Processing...

Here I sit, on the couch, the morning after Thanksgiving, and I think that I'm still working food through my gut. It was an extravaganza yesterday. We didn't go the normal route, well, the normal foodstuffs route. We did go the normal route of stuffing ourselves silly, but alas, it was not with turkey and the usual stuff. Here is what we had for our Thanksgiving:

Cheese Ball

Various Marinated Olives

Pate

Sausage Balls

Peppered Salami w/ Bleu Cheese

Relish Tray

Various Pickles

Spinach and Artichoke Dip

Various Cheeses and Crackers

Champagne and Wine

I've got to say, it was pretty damn good. Sure, I'm a little sad about not getting turkey, but the sausage balls and cheese ball more than made up for that stuff missing out of our day. Instead of feasting in a huge amount once, we put the stuff out on the table, and then just grazed, more or less, for hours on end. The other thing we did other than eat, was to watch part of season 3 of Bones, or some of the episodes. We did end up heading towards bed around 8:30, after a long day of eating, drinking, and lazing about.

Today, we're going to head out, and battle the masses on Black Friday. First, we've got to get Steph's new watch sized, but the thing is, we don't need to purchase anymore gifts. Steph did all of our Christmas shopping weeks ago, which is fine by me. We decided to divide and conquer this year. I got the easy part. I had to purchase the tickets for us to head home to Maine for Christmas, and she got to buy the gifts for everyone. I'm glad she did the gift buying, mostly because I'm not that good at it, and I would have put it off for far too long, and would have been rushing like a day before to get everything done and bought, and wrapped. Now I don't know if she likes getting all of the gifts, but she's good at it.

We have our 1 year anniversary coming up, on Monday. In a fit of compulsion buying the other night, I got her a somewhat fancy watch (see above) for our anniversary. I figured it would be something that she could keep for possibly a long time. So I was glad to get it for her. Me, being me, and not being able to wait to give gifts to my wife, almost as soon as I got home, I busted out her gifts. First, we had the watch. Then, I figured since I was already at the mall, I would get her a fancy dress

from Banana Republic, and gave that to her for Christmas / her Birthday (which is on the 8th). Now, all of my personal shopping is done. Also in the plans for the anniversary, is to go to the Richmond Hill Inn, just outside our hometown of Asheville for a fancy dinner on Monday night. I'm pretty psyched about that. The place looks great, but we'll see how much I like it after we eat there. I seem to have this issue about fine dining, meaning, I'm seldom really super impressed by someone's food. I guess I'm just a harsh critic or something like that. Don't know for sure.

Tomorrow, tomorrow starts the fitness plan for myself. I've not really had much of a chance to workout, or to get into good shape since this Spring, mostly because the new job got in the way, then the move, then the house buying, moving into the new house, putting in the fence, doing work at the house, and so on and so forth. It's been a busy year of turmoil. Good turmoil, but turmoil nonetheless. It made my normal pattern and way of doing things pretty much not able to be done, and so, we start all over again. It's OK though, I plan on being at my planned "race" weight by March, or April. I've got a goal (which I'm going to keep to myself for now), and I plan on making it. I'm definitely not afraid of hard work, and sacrifice in the pursuit of fitness, so we'll grind it out, and see what happens. I've thought about racing again, but we'll see how that shakes out. Living now in Asheville, it is going to be easy to do a bunch of training races right near my house, and also there is always a bunch of racing in Greenville, SC, which is but a short drive away for me. So who knows, I might do some. We'll see how it all shakes out come March.

Thanksgiving 2007...

Since myself and the fiance are headed down to get married next week in St. Croix, we decided that this year, Thanksgiving would be at the house here in the Dirty "D". We sort of went back and forth on where we should get food. I was ALL for Boston Market, having had a decent outing with them back during Thanksgiving of 2002. The fiance on the other hand, wanted something fancier. Somehow, I talked her into the Boston Market route, and that was pretty much decided.

Then, this morning we received a brainstorm. Why not go and check out Whole Foods? I'm sure that they'll have some good chow available for purchase, and it is a little fancier than Boston Market, but not a $150 dollar dinner at some fancy restaurant. We were pleasantly surprised at what they had at the old Whole Foods. We were looking at some decent roast turkey, stuffing, cranberries, root vegetables, brussel sprouts, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and of course, some gravy that we had at home. To keep with the Thanksgiving tradition, and in keeping with what was thrown down in the form of liquid in the colonial times, we decided to polish off dinner with some hard apple cider. Got to have some alcohol in there somewhere to keep things hopping. Since we got to the market a little late, and all of the pumpkin pie had been taken away by previous customers, we had to "settle" for apple pie with ice cream, and caramel sauce to top it off. Yeah, that's right, it's a proper Thanksgiving feast, and the best part of it all? We didn't have to cook it, and only had a few dishes to clean up after the eating was all done (that we haven't really done yet, but we will sometime before the end of this weekend probably). On tap for the rest of the day? The fiance was talking about going for a walk, but I'm down on that. No walking needed here, just more food, and maybe some pie. Right now, as I write this, we're watching the Ghost Hunters marathon, which will be followed up by a movie festival. On the movie line-up for this evening, we've got Knocked Up, The Queen, and I'm sure at some point in time, the fiance will no doubt sneak in a viewing of Love Actually, just because that's what's normally done at her house. Some traditions just have to carry over I guess.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving to all of our friends, and especially to our families. We can't wait to see everyone next weekend! And for those of you who can't come, we will miss you when we're in St. Croix for our nuptials.

Check out the pictures of this afternoon's Thanksgiving Dinner. It's pretty damn good stuff.