A Thanksgiving Miracle (not really)

This past Tuesday Jen and I made the 7 hour drive down to her parent's house in Orange County for Thanksgiving. Our pit stop at the halfway point gave me a chance to eat Taco Bell for the second time in four days (I've clearly been watching my figure), but, believe it or not, this was not the highlight of the holiday!

Shortly after we arrived Jen's Dad told us that we'd be eating something a little unusual for Thanksgiving dinner. I immediately thought (in my best British cockney accent) "what's all this then" as I considered what the hell we might be eating instead of turkey. On a side note, I'd like to mention that in my opinion the turkey is bar none the ugliest bird I have ever seen and while I consider myself an animal lover I am pretty sure I'd feel no remorse whatsoever about personally decapitating an entire rafter of Turkeys. Yes, a group of turkeys is known as a rafter. I'd also like to say that I suspect that I'd feel no remorse about killing the person or people who came up with the name "rafter" for a group of turkeys. Is this the best they could come up with? How about a hoard or a pile or a mess (How many turkeys you got? Oh, we got a whole mess a turkeys). If it was a group of people who came up with the term rafter, I think that group of people should be known as a "dumbass" of animal group namers.

Now that you've had plenty of time to wonder about what we were having for Thanksgiving, I'll give you the rest of the story. I'd mentioned to my father in law Gerry around Christmas time last year that I'd always wanted to eat a goose. Seriously, have you looked at a goose lately? Those things look delicious, but I hear they are a little fatty. Armed with the knowledge that I'd be up for something unusual, but still wanting to keep with tradition, Gerry ordered a turducken! When I heard this news I said "WOW, Awesome" and put my hand up waiting for a high five from my wife...which never came. She was too in shock from the good news to even muster a high five...either that or she was trying to wean me off of my 10 high five a day habit.

For those of you who don't know what a turducken is, it's a turkey that's stuffed with a duck which is stuffed with a chicken and has a layer of stuffing between each bird. John Madden the football announcer is a big fan of these meaty assemblies and has mentioned the turducken on many a broadcast. My friends and I, who are a bunch of ravenous carnivores, have talked on many occasions about how awesome the notion of stuffing meat into other kinds of meat is and how the creator or the turducken must have been a genius. No doubt a fat genius who most likely died before the age of 40 from a massive heart attack, but a genius none the less. Of course, I was pretty excited to actually get a chance to eat one of these babies after several years of mentioning it periodically.

The turducken did not disappoint. After a few miscues with the oven it came out about 2 hours after the initial ETA, but there was plenty of wine and football to fill time. All three birds were tasty and delicious, but I still managed to cram in a mountain of cheesy potatoes and pumpkin bread in addition to the trio of fowl.

I did managed to squeeze a little poker into the long weekend. On Wednesday, Jen and I went to Best Buy and bought a new and improved wireless router for her parents so everyone would be able to use the internet on their laptops in the living room. I played a few heads up tournaments as well as about a dozen SNG's, but my real success came on Saturday morning in the supernova freeroll. After about 4 hours I finished 5th out of 368 and picked up what felt like a very easy $1,040. Some of you may recall that this is the exact place and payout that Jen managed in the same tournament last week. Hopefully I can keep up the steady wins for the next three weeks, because I've got 11 days off in a row scheduled at end the year.