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Okay, so I’ve been stressing about this Thanskgiving dinner and reading all the great turkey ideas you guys posted… and now I’m wondering how you are with side dishes. I mean, I’d planned to just do the normal veggies and casserole-type stuff, but I’m suddenly worried that my plain Indiana fare will fail to impress. So, got any new and exciting ways to serve yams? Any secret family recipes for outta-this-world baked beans? I’m looking for inspiration, folks. If you’ve got any favorite holiday dishes, please post a recipe or link to this thread and save my ass. Thank you. 🙂

I had a bit of a reading marathon today and managed to finish Kushiel’s Dart. Huh. I think we’ll have lots to discuss. How’s everybody else doing? I know this is a busy time of year, so if folks haven’t had a chance to pick it up (but still want to) let me know and we’ll just postpone the discussion a bit. If you’re still on the fence, just let me warn (or is it persuade?) you again that this is a very “sexy” book and you should be pretty open-minded before tackling it. There aren’t any really graphic sex descriptions; it’s more just the idea of what Phédre is and how her world works. (Personally, I’d have preferred more scenes of nookie with my favorite character – and less with, oh, say everybody else – but that’s jumping ahead to the discussion and that’s very naughty.) Just so you know.

My house stinks. The Snook is brewing again…

<darkly>No, Harry Potter is not out here yet. It won’t be out here for two weeks. So I don’t wanna hear about it. This is my punishment for seeing it before everybody else last year. I’m trying to convince the Snook to fly me to Singapore before I explode with frustration.</darkly>

Ask Yahoo answers the age old question: “What are blogs and why are they so popular?” My reply would be: “If you have to ask, you don’t spend enough time on the Internet for me to bother explaining it to you.”

Dammit! Max wrote a nice big post about my Thanksgiving plans, but thanks to some insensitive bastards, he’s turned off his comments and I can’t thank him for the shout-out. Thanks, Max! I was also going to tell him that we deep-fry turkeys in Indiana, too. (At least, my Mom says she’s done it.) I found a recipe and showed it to the Snook yesterday, to which he immediately replied: “Where in the world do we get 20 liters of lard?” Good question. We’ll stick with roasting.

The drought rages on. The city has imposed voluntary water restrictions to try to bring the level in our reservoirs back up. Apparently “voluntary” means they’re not going to fine you if you water your lawn, but they’re urging your neighbors to tell you on if you do. Hmmm. Fine, I can refrain from watering during the day. But my worms need moisture or they’ll dry out and die! I figure I can also stop taking the occasional bath and go back to just showering. I’ll miss my bath bombs though!

Singapore may unban chewing gum. Huh. You know, when we visited last year I was so impressed by how clean and nice the city was, I kinda found myself agreeing with the ban. Of course, I was being a criminal at the time (since I had a pack of Wrigley’s buried in my backpack that I chew on planes to keep my ears from popping). Now I can go back and be a law-abiding visitor. 🙂

The Snook and I tried out another local pub’s trivia contest tonight. It was just the two of us, and we came in second! We lost by one friggin’ point. We should’ve had it too, except I pulled a complete boner and misidentified a Dido song as Sarah McLachlan. But still, a $30 bar tab (between two of us) is nothing to sneeze at!

Hooray! I’m planning a big ol’ American Thanksgiving dinner for a bunch of Aussies – though we have to hold it on the 30th, since it’s obviously not a public holiday here – and I just found a company that delivers American food Down Under! I’ve been trying to figure out how to make a pumpkin pie without the canned mix, and now I don’t have to! They don’t have Cool Whip though, which is a slight disappointment. (Listen to me! Like it’ll be such a hassle to have to use real whipped cream over the fake stuff.) The menu is starting to take shape, and luckily I won’t have to fight my way into the stores weeks in advance here. I can do this! I am not domestically-challenged! This is my new mantra.

Now I just have to pick the brains of all the female members of my family for recipes… 🙂