Happy Thanksgiving (and what can go wrong)

[Glitch Girl]

First off, I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.  I hope it was good, even those of you who don't celebrate it.

Mine... well, it was a very Murphy Thanksgiving.

The plan was for my mother and I to meet up and travel to a place our family owns up in a little town called Mentone.  It's a small town in the mountains with great food and lots of artisans.  We had reservations for Thanksgiving dinner with one of the local bed and breakfasts, and then for the rest of the weekend we were just going to hang out and enjoy the peace and quiet. 

These plans were made back in October. 

Waaaaay before the big cold front came through.

Not to be daunted, we went up anyway.  When we arrived, it's about 5:00 in the evening and the house was bitterly cold, but hey, we have a furnace, so it might take a while, but that should knock off the cold.  I start it up, we unpack a bit and settle in. 

We hook up the TV and antenna (we don't have cable up there since we aren't up that often) and see what stations we can get.  The only one we care about is the one for the Macy's Parade and the Dog Show following it.  Unfortunately, we can't seem to pick that one up.  Hrm... not good, but we can try again in the morning.

The furnace is working very slowly.  It has been a few hours since we arrived, and while it is slowly warming up, it's still pretty frigid in the house.  At the rate it's going, it may take all night to get comfortable.  Still undaunted, we pull out all the blankets and pile them on the beds.   I decide that instead of taking my shower that night and going to bed with wet hair, I'll just wait until morning. 

That's when I notice the bag with all my toiletries, including my medications and toothbrush is missing*. 

Okay, things aren't going well.  STILL undaunted, I manage to scrounge up a toothbrush and get ready for bed.  My bed is heavily laden with blankets and quilts and I burrow into them for the night.

I sleep reasonably well, though every time I poke my face out from under the covers, it gets cold and I turtle back in.  About 7:00 the next morning, I awake and spend about 30 minutes deciding if I'm going to get out of bed because it's still pretty cold.  Eventually I do, and that's when I notice the haze.

There's faint smoke throughout the entire house.  It is also about the same temperature as it was when I went to bed.  This is because that central heater was not designed for the way were taxing it, a fact that neither me nor my mother knew, and apparently was smoking with either clogged intakes or effort or something because there is now a thin layer of black soot on everything. 

At this point I admit to being daunted.

I wake my mother, tell her what happened, and shut off the heater.  There is a flurry of packing and reservation canceling since we obviously can't stay here (and practically everything has a black residue on it now, including us) and before 9:00, we are out the door and headed back home. 

I still hadn't had that shower.

We arrive at my mother's house two hours later, tired, hungry, but in surprisingly good spirits.  We manage to catch about half the parade over waffles, and then enjoy the dog show and the reair of the parade to see what we missed, pausing long enough for me to cook up some cinnamon apples on the stove.  We're going to try to have a thanksgiving dinner of sorts a little later in the weekend, but until then, I eventually grab my things and head home. 

One shower later, here we are.

So to all of you out there, may your thanksgiving be far less eventful than mine.

(* this would later turn up at my house, having never made it out of the bathroom.  D'oh!)

[Figure Fan]

Sounds like quite the ordeal, to say the least. That black residue...yuck.

My Thanksgiving was pretty good. I spent most of the day packing up my things since I'm moving on December 3. Later on I went to my sister's for dessert, which was a lot of fun.

[Outcast]

We don't celebrate Thanksgiving here, but Happy Thanksgiving to you guys anyways. The closest thing we had to a Thanksgiving celebration was when one of our suppliers gave the office a stuffed Turkey. I didn't try any though, but the others did and they seemed to like it.

[Deaths Jester]

I got lost chasing some turkey for diner....or was that a dream...gawds, I really need to drink more to regain my sense of reality....

[Cyber Burn]

Sorry your Thanksgiving didn't go quite as planned, I hope you and your Mother are able to enjoy something this weekend.

As for me, whatever bug was going around my household hit me again, harder than the first time, I missed Thanksgiving at my parents house on Thursday and my Uncles on Friday. Fortunately, my Wife and kids were feeling up to the task and went to both. So while they were enjoying Turkey dinners, I was home in bed with a barf bowl. Unpleasant to say the least. I don't think that my family was very happy that I was not there, but at least it avoided conversations that would have caused further problems.

[BentonGrey]

Ohh man, I'm sorry for those of y'all who had rough Thanksgivings!  I also want to wish everyone a belated but happy Thanksgiving.

For our part, it was a good one, but our drive back was awful.  Construction and ridiculous traffic turned a 7 hour trip into an 11 hour one.