Thanksgiving 2006

This Thanksgiving, Ace was a trooper.  My mom and brother and his fiancee all flew in to Sacramento, where Ace and I joined them to celebrate with my future aunt-in-law, BC.

We thought we'd be safe from traffic, and indeed my mom had made the drive from Menlo Park to Sacramento the day before in two hours, but thought we'd be fine on the actual holiday.   (You know how air travel on the 25th is a breeze.)  But it was not fine.  It was four or five hours.  But the sun was shining and we saw lots of cool sights, including a wide variety of bridges. 

I decided too late that I should have snapped all the bridges we crossed to get there, but thought these two were kind of exciting to look at.

BC is the nicest lady ever, extremely generous and an attentive hostess, but is also very laid-back, so that you do feel really welcome and comfortable at her house.

She treated us to a Thanksgiving turducken, and this post simply cannot do justice to the curiosity and excitement which filled me, and the conversation and speculation it generated as we approached the day and the meal.  Verdict?  It was actually...really good!  I think any reflexive nose wrinkling related purely to the overmanipulation of any food, which in this case, as Ace pointed out, didn't come close to, say, the hamburger, so from then on I was down with it.  And it was realy good.  I can't say I understand how the inside could be cooked without the outside being burnt to a crisp, but it all worked out.  I think I actually like chicken best, and for obvious reasons, I guess the chicken parts were the moistest.  But to be totally honest, it was hard to tell what was what - except that the duck seemed mostly darker.  Which is a little confusing if you prefer dark meat, like I do.  I think there were chicken legs in there, but I'm not 100% sure.

Thursday night we stayed at the Heritage Inn Express, which was superconvenient and had a microwave and a fridge and a sunken tub - if you took a bath your head was at the level of the floor.  (I'd share photos of the tub in all its awesomeness, but this is a family site.)  But all they had left was smoking rooms.  The desk clerk had warned us that they were really smoky, but it was unbelievable how pervasive it was.  You'd keep going from the room to the bathroom and back again hoping you'd escape the choking stench but it was everywhere, you could feel it seeping into your eyeballs.  And you couldn't open a window because it was so cold.  Phewee.  (But they have a continental breakfast included, and, because of the aforementioned microwave and fridge, that's where I plan to stay for the marathon.  It's pretty close to the start.)

The next day we moved to the nicest Holiday Inn I've ever stayed at.  They had a pool and an exercise room and a hot tub, and a pillow menu. 

And towels folded into art.

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The day after Thanksgiving Ace and my mom and I drove the CIM race course, which looks, you know, long. 

But the capitol at the end was beautiful at dusk; there was a great sunset and they were in the process of putting up Christmas paraphernalia. 

Day after that, BC took everyone to a fish hatchery, which deserves its own post, and to Lake Natoma - Sacramento looks like a great place to be an outdoorsy person.

At about 2 pm Ace and I headed back, but not without stopping at the Jelly Belly outlet, which we had expected to scrape into 20 minutes before closing time.  But instead they were going all out for Christmas and had tours and events and caroling and visits with Santa going on all evening. 

We saw so many kids hopped up on sugar, but all of them were smiling and being good.  Maybe they were sitting tight for Santa.  The place was designed for kids - everything was in candy colors.  The cafe offered jelly bean-shaped hamburgers and pizza, chicken fingers and peanut butter sandwiches.  But I was surprised to see a grilled chicken and brie sandwich - and gosh, if it wasn't pretty good!  We bought about sixteen pounds of Belly Flops, skipped the remainder of the Christmas hoopla, and got home in time to build a fire at Ace's house and watch Singing in the Rain, my #1 favorite movie of all time.  A nice, peaceful homecoming after a busy weekend.

Comments

[Vaguely Urban]

Turducken is the holy grail of Thanksgiving foods. Congratulations!

Also, your rack looks so good in that last picture, I'll give you a pass on failing to capture photos of all the bridges.

[TheQueen]

1. No one with hips that slim should have such a rack. No Justice!

2. Glad to hear the Turd(ucken) update.

3. Oh no - all I had in Fort Lauderdale this January was a smoking room, and I thought "Neh, all the hotel rooms I stayed in in childhood and until the '90s were smoking rooms, they didn't smell any different." Besides, I thought, I can bring Febreeze. This is bad news. May have to call the hotel to see if anything else opened up.

[Squisita]

Thanks, guys! I'm sure I will post a picture soon in which said rack will have mysteriously disappeared. I love sweater weather!

TQ, before you go judging me, note the optical illusion created by orienting hips at right angle to camera while twisting upper body towards camera...this is why I look like I'm humping Ace's leg.

Also, TQ, you'll be able to open the window in Ft. Lauderdale. But I agree, I thought it would be no big deal - I think it's just gotten worse nowadays since ONLY smokers stay in smoking rooms. It can't hurt to check back. It was really bad in there.