\nWell, it looks like poor Spenser might be fully on the road to recovery.
\nTemperature running steady at 48 degrees, new video drivers and patches for the
\nmotherboard… maybe we are home free. Although who knows, we could freeze
\nup at any moment here. I keep having paranoid thoughts about that as I
\nwrite this. Stay on target… stay on target…\n<\/p>\n
\nThanksgiving week was excellent. Not only is Thanksgiving really my
\nfavorite holiday of the year, I managed to get in at least four
\nhomemade meals in a row this year. Always a good thing when you’re a
\npeanut-butter-on-a-spoon consuming bachelor such as myself.\n<\/p>\n
\nTuesday night I went over to Brian Gee’s, for some homecooked \nWell, this year I arrived at the door to his palatial new \nAnyway, it was refreshing to see Brian. I hadn’t actually hung out \nApparently he feels this is a sign I need to be \nWednesday night I had dinner with \nAfter dinner, Tim and M’ris and I got into a discussion about Harry Potter. \nTim also pointed out that J.K. Rowling snubbed \nThursday night was Thanksgiving. This year I decided that it was time for the \nThe meal was excellent (if I do say so myself). We ate with cousin David and \nFriday night was Son of Thanksgiving. We finished most of the turkey, although \nI then went and dragged Nancy out of the house, and we hung out at a bar in Campbell \nAll in all, a mind- and waist-expanding week! I suppose I have plenty more to prattle The thing to understand about Brian is, he’s one of those guys who moved to the Silicon Valley and was shocked, shocked to discover that it’s sometimes kinda hard to meet nice girls around here. “Evan!” he’d cry. “This place is a wasteland<\/em>.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nChinese food. The thing to understand about Brian is, he’s one
\nof those guys who moved to the Silicon Valley and was shocked,
\nshocked to discover that it’s sometimes kinda hard to meet nice
\ngirls around here. “Evan!” he’d cry. “This place is a
\nwasteland<\/em>.”\n<\/p>\n
\nSan Francisco pad promptly at 7pm, to find Brian in the kitchen,
\nsurrounded by at least five or six reasonably attractive
\nyoung women. Clearly Brian is not doing so badly for himself.
\nOf course he is handsome, intelligent, funny, ambitious, a good cook,
\nblah blah blah, so go figure.\n<\/p>\n
\nwith him for a long time. How long? Well, when I mentioned to him
\nthat Amber and I had broken up, his sympathetic, heartfelt response was,
\n“Ummm… Amber who?” Somehow I forgot to mention to him that I had been dating
\nthis very nice woman for the last ten months in the first place. Ooops.\n<\/p>\n
\na bit more communicative about my social life in the future.
\nI’m investigating blast-faxes.\n<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
\nM’ris<\/a> and Mark and
\nTim. And she served angelsuppa<\/em> (“angel soup”, I think), which is a
\nNorsk dessert of berries (“cloudberries”) and cream. Or for American
\npalates, berries and ice cream. Good stuff.\n<\/p>\n
\nTim and M’ris pointed out that Harry Potter and his friends are all pretty
\none-dimensional — they’re basically good kids, they don’t go through any
\nmajor internal struggles, and they all fit various boarding school stereotypes.
\nThey’re right — I had noticed this with the unredeemably nasty Draco Malfoy, but for
\nsome reason I missed it in the other characters. Anyway, on further reflection,
\nI think the one exception is Snape. He started out a Death-Eater, but
\nhad a change of heart; he hates Harry Potter passionately, but dives in and
\nsaves him when necessary. That’s worth some points, I think.\n<\/p>\n
\nthis year’s Hugo Award<\/a> ceremony for
\nHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire<\/em>. If so, that’s pretty tacky.
\nI certainly hope Rowling isn’t one of those authors who thinks she writes
\n“lit-rah-chah”, as opposed to that blight on our civilization, speculative fiction.\n<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
\nyounger generation to learn the family Thanksgiving secrets. I made the stuffing,
\nmade the gravy, and prepared, stuffed, and carved the turkey. The one thing I didn’t do
\nwas cook the turkey… so if Dad gets hit by a bus next year, his secrets
\nwith the Weber die with him.\n<\/p>\n
\nsome family friends, Susan Hennings and her daughter Anna.
\nAnna is two weeks older than Sarah, and about a foot-and-a-half taller.
\nThey’ve been friends since they were crawling around on the floor… which
\npretty much puts me and Eric<\/a> to shame.\n<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
\nwe had to invite yet more<\/em> cousins to do it. And their girlfriends.
\nI made pumpkin pie, but unfortunately I misread the recipe and used 1\/4c of
\nbrown sugar instead of 3\/4c. Tee-hee! Everyone was polite about it though.
\n“Mmmm, yes, you don’t want to oversweeten the pumpkin pie. It tastes sooo
\nartificial.” Some of them even waited a full 90 seconds before reaching for the honey.\n<\/p>\n
\n(Katie Bloom’s) with Randy and Don and Nicole and Monica and Monica’s Boyfriend Who
\nI Can Never Remember the Name Of, Even Though He Can Remember Mine Just Fine and
\nSeems Like a Very Nice Guy.\n<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
\non about, but I might as well save it for the near future. I’m afraid I’m going to start
\nsounding like Liz Smith, or maybe
\nJackie Harvey<\/a>, anyway.
\nItem!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"