Hmm. Where was I? Yesterday was Thanksgiving. Very nice - Michelle and George and Alex and Chris were here, we all (pretty much) helped out in the kitchen, which meant it got pretty crowded at points. I took charge of the mashed potatos (added pepper boursin). The meal was terrific - my taters, Michelle's excellent sweet potatoes, spinach and chard, cranberry jelly and relish, great stuffing, turkey of course, goose (a good new idea), and some bizarre thing made from prunes and goose liver. Was very full, ate pie, went to bed before it was made.

Today we were active for most of the day, at least after the turkey lunch. Went first to the co-op, excuse me, the Abundance Cooperative Market, which seems to be doing well, and where I bought more groceries than probably I ought, including some of those good Indian things. And some interesting shaving cream, at Martha's suggestion. Then a driving tour of downtown, which I think looks better than I've ever seen it. The whole small city civic pride thing has always been kind of amusing to me, and I definitely think it's a good thing, it just sometimes seems like the D&C (local paper) and businesses and stuff pretending that everyone cares about this stuff. I guess some people really do. We went for a walk at Highland Park (except Michelle, who asked to be dropped off at home) which was really lovely. It was quite warm in the sun - I didn't wear a jacket. I tried to practice tango steps as we were walking. After we were home for no longer than five minutes, they were motivating to get going again, so a bunch of us walked down Monroe with some vague shopping goals. Alex and I split off and went to Lakeshore Record Exchange, which has just moved to the corner of Park and Oxford. It's one of those stores that always catch me off guard- with lots of imports and singles and stuff, with little notes on a lot of the cases and the CDs behind the counter. They had large racks of used CDs for $3, but it was all junk. Alex picked up an old Silverchair album there, and he bought the new New Order (which we listened to this evening, pretty good) and Post (my recommend.) I found the new Plaid and a (used?) copy of the Mad Professor v. Massive Attack disc - remixes from Protection (which I don't actually own,) and Alex surprised me by paying for them. Hey, thanks. (But I want to spend some of this money - they wouldn't let me buy the groceries either.)

When we got back, I put on the Plaid, which Michelle assessed as "not unpleasant." We had a surprisingly "valid" (to use my dad's word) aesthetic conversation about electronic music, live performance, and Abba. She might be able to get us tickets (expensive with donation) for "Mamma Mia" around Christmas, even though it's sold out. I'm starting to get really excited for winter break. Only two more weeks of school proper. Funny thing is that I have as many papers due between now and then than I've written since the beginning of the semester (let's see - 25 total pages done, 24 to go, assuming I hit the middle of the page ranges, which I will undoubtedly exceed. that's not counting a final rewrite for Murder, or any Syntax work. okay.) For some reason, my unhopeful desire to eat Chinese for dinner panned out; we went to the Golden Dynasty, ordered too much food, even more so than usual, meaning that we really have a ridiculous leftover situation on our hands. Too bad I didn't bring any tupperware. After that, a game of Risk, which I haven't played in years (my mom's suggestion!?) with my two parents and two of my siblings (Martha was with a friend, of course.) I spent too long squabbling over Australia with Chris, and by the time I had secured that and Europe, Carl and Alex were big enough to crush me in one quick turn. I listened to the CD by "Ben Flash and his Boyish Good Looks," a band put together by Ben Pattison and his friends at Wyomoco. It's very intentionally amateurish and jokingly self-aggrandizing, but some of the stuff is pretty catchy. I liked the line about being repaced by Elisabeth Shue. They use AppleTalk a bit too much. I want to know where they found a turntablist. Anyway, I checked out their website, which is fun, someone (Ben) obviously puts a lot of time into it. Just makes me realize we (Inflight) have to get our act together, and how easy it all is. (Man, it would be so much easier if we were still in high school - so much more time for this stuff.)

Words for the weekend: lugubrious, ululate, recidivism. Nobody seems to be active online, e-mail or website-wise. I guess that's as it should be.

we're gonna live until we die
and we're gonna live til we get high