by ·0 Comments

Thanksgiving and Christmas in my family is a small affair. There aren’t many of us in the area. I enjoy entertaining but am used to having between three and five courses for 18 to 30 people. So a family get together is small compared to what I’m used to. Then again, it’s family.

I asked my mother to bring cheese and crackers and she asked not to as she didn’t want people to fill up ahead of time. Ok. She provided cranberry sauce and my brother and his wife brought potatoes.

I arrived about 90 minutes before the target plating time and set to work. Much of it was simply waiting as two dishes needed to finished in the oven, one had to be brought to temperature in a water bath, and two needed to chill. Everyone asked if there was anything they could do to help. Everything went out within about five minutes of one another and I was pleased. Normally my timing isn’t quite so tight.

The first course was the noodle salad which my dad eyed suspiciously. He may not encounter eggplant and mango often nor does he probably like toasted sesame seed. He had a forkful, noted that it wasn’t for him, and went on to the other courses. My heart sank a little but in short order the bread was demolished followed by a healthy portions of everything else.

At the end of the meal my uncle looked at me and said “I’ve never eaten so much”. This wasn’t a casual observation so much as I felt like he was sharing a secret. My brother commented “the food was all good”. There’s two ways to take this phrase, indicating that each food item were good or that the food was sufficient. If the former, that marks the first time my brother has ever complimented my food. Unlike after most holidays, my uncle, father, mother, and brother each volunteered to take something home with them. I hadn’t seen this before.

This wasn’t the first family holiday meal I’d done but it was the first to receive such a positive response. My mother once commented “I can see how people like your baking but it doesn’t really do much for me”. My dad has commented on how entrees “weren’t dry enough for my me”. I don’t know if this marks some progress in my cooking abilities or something else. This was my nephew’s second Thanksgiving, but the first where he had the same food as us. I think that somehow made things tastier.

by ·0 Comments

Thanksgiving passed without incident. So much so that I had some line left in my drama rope and decided to install Windows 8 on my main desktop. Even that went smoothly. Hm….

My uncle came up from Delaware and appetizers and cheeses came out at around 3pm. The turkey was done by 6pm and everything else was done and out for the dinner proper at 7pm. I am currently eating low carb and couldn’t have any of the desserts I had made, but my uncle had brought a cheesecake and a can of whipped cream. Whipped cream, while tasting sweet, has almost no sugar in it. The whipped cream didn’t survive the night.

Everyone left after a main course of three meats at around 10pm and on the way out my uncle looked at me and said “I just realized, you did everything tonight. Thank you, Terry?” This moment of “I’m Ron Burgundy?” was more touching than strange. At no point prior had my uncle reason to really thank me. He was the uncle that gave the great Christmas presents, he was the uncle that hosted the best game night parties, he was the uncle that had the pool. Now I was the nephew hosting Thanksgiving.

by ·0 Comments

Kelly Booz is pregnant and tonight brought over her ultrasound pictures. I have seen ultrasound pictures before but never have they had such immediacy. Kelly asked me to make a copy of the odd-sized output and I did. Randy swore they were higher quality, somehow, than the original print and we both shrugged.

Photocopies, this is what I offer to you, little future person. In 10 years, if they are still available. I hope to buy you your first chemistry set as well.

Godspeed, Kelly and Randy.

by ·0 Comments

My brother and sister-in-law took my father, mother, and me out to dinner and revealed that they were expecting.  Their child is due in August meaning my sister-in-law has been with child for a few months and my parents and I took to learning this differently:

Mom: I thought you had a bit of a glow about you.
Dad: I knew something was up when you said you’d stopped drinking.
Me: I noticed no changes in you that suggested that you were pregnant.
Sister-in-Law: Thank you, Terry.

by ·0 Comments

My cousin’s wife decided to host a get together of the Robinson cousins and my brother, sister-in-law and I traveled to King of Prussia to meet everyone.  I’ve never much enjoyed family functions but this one went well.  Cousin is close enough that you can lean on family as a connector but it doesn’t become a straight jacket.  Before departing and after a good amount of drinking we took a group shot where most of the ladies wore funny hats.

Me: That’s interesting. I have a tiny hat in my car.
Cousin #1: That’s beautiful.  You should wear your tiny hat.
Cousin #2: Go get your tiny hat.
Brother: You’re not wearing a god damn tiny hat in a family photo.
Cousin #1: If he wants to wear a tiny hat he can wear a tiny hat.
Cousin #2: What’s your problem with your brother’s tiny hat?  It’s probably a lovely tiny hat.
Brother: Could everyone please stop saying tiny hat and someone take a picture?
Cousin #3: Everyone say… ‘tiny hat’ and smile.
Group: Tiny hat!
Brother: I hate all of you.

There are times when I love my family.

by ·0 Comments

My mother hosted Christmas this year and my mother’s sister and her husband were there in addition to my brother’s fiance on top of the Robinson Four.  The order of the evening was to quickly get buzzed and begin the airing of disdain for the rest of humanity.  If the purpose of a grace is to unify the gathered eaters behind an idea than this years was “Oprah, I hate that shit”.  In addition to this, the nature of old was revealed to me:

Uncle: Terry, you’ll learn that as you age you just don’t care.  If Mike Vic were on my fantasy football team, I’d say those dogs asked for it.

I also learned the curious fact that my aunt has no fingerprints.  She attempted to re-register for her alien registration card, they found she had no finger prints, and they told her to come back in a week like the fingerprint fairy is going to appear and grand her whorls, ridges, and valleys about her digits.

Merry Christmas

by ·0 Comments

At about 11:30 PM the day before my birthday I removed the date from being listed on Facebook to mitigate the deluge of “Huppy Birfday” messages.  I checked through other birthday publishing things and turned those off as well but missed one: my TF2 team’s site.   Shortly after midnight, someone on the west coast posted “Happy Birthday” and the cascade of the news feed rolled across my friends list.  Damn.  There is a down-side of not giving a date in that people make assumptions when not given information such as the message from a Scout friend “congratulations on making it to 32!”.

My brother has missed a couple of my birthdays in the past and I don’t hold it against him but he’s developed as a gifter.  I received a text message in the morning asking me if I wanted anything in particular, I said no, so I got cash, a card and a pack of gum.  He felt uncomfortable not giving me an actual box.

26 feels much like 20 and 22 as useless ages with no milestones.  23-29 is one of the rare inversions in the aggregate life table were one’s less likely to die year-on-year and I can feel the wisdom of age reducing my chances of dying this year being 35 millionths lower than last year.  To prove it, I’m going to forego my summer ritual of wrestling a bear while bungee jumping.

by ·0 Comments

My father and I eat very well on long weekends as I have time to prepare proper meals.  I made a Santa Fe stew which takes about 10 hours to prepare, most of which is stewing, and left it in the crock pot for a self-serve dinner.  I ate before my dad and came down to see him feeding a portion of his stew to the dog.

Me: Problem with the stew?
Dad: No, I just thought Max would enjoy the black beans more than I would.
Me: Traitor, I spent my youth dodging my mortal enemy, green beans forced upon me by my mother and here I see you feeding beans to the dog.  Turncoat!
Dad: No, it was your mother, and I hated her beans too, but before you were born she switched from green beans to black beans if I complained.  I was exchanging one thing I hated for another.
Me: Touche.  If we go over mom’s for Christmas and she prepares beans and you say anything about me not eating them you’re going to have six months of black beans when I get fired.
Dad: Deal.

by ·0 Comments

I dislike the artificiality of the gatherings for most holidays especially in my family where manufacturing the false sense of togetherness that rivals the false closure of the Treaty of Versailles.  As our clan slowly shed the traditional vestiges of Thanksgiving the loss of “What I’m Thankful For” has lifted my spirits the most as the non-specific engendered supplication always smacked of sanctimony in my book.  This year, my mother, father, and I went to the Buck Hotel and had their Thanksgiving special.  The service was mediocre at best and I nearly rendered the hostess catatonic when I stated so but a sliver of light jabbed against the jejune and made the event worthwhile.

While waiting for our food to arrive,the large table behind us began to do their “What I’m Thankful For” ritual when drug to a halt with a young girl who droned on about loving school, colored paper.  After three or four such prosaic mentionings some octogenarian at the table piped up with “sometime today, dear”.

by ·0 Comments

For years my hobbies were obscure enough that none of many family dare get me anything related to them for Christmas.  That was until I decided to take up Scrabble.  I swore it off a few weeks ago, but apparently not loudly enough as I’ve received a Scrabble Calendar, Scrabble Dictionary, Scrabble Portable (which is quite nice), Scrabble Word-Builder and a subscription to the Scrabble MMORPG.

Next time I get a hobby, it’s going to be collecting Fabrige Eggs.