I've read a lot of posts this week about Thanksgiving, both of the "why I don't like the holidays" variety and the "hurrah, holidays!" type. I've always liked Thanksgiving, but there's a good bit of that that's liking going to New York. Up through high school, we'd always spend the whole week (my parents still do, actually), and it was a chance to go to museums and the Strand and see my mom's side of the family. Over the last few years, though, my attitude toward family Thanksgiving has changed a bit. I live close enough that I get to New York a lot more often, plus I can't take the week off the way I used to. The one year I stayed at Oberlin for Thanksgiving was a lot of fun, and it was really relaxing to not have to travel.
All things considered, though, my Thanksgiving was quite nice. I got to spend Wednesday evening with friends, which made me much happier to head up to New York on Thursday. It might've been nicer if I'd gotten more than four hours of sleep (why is it that I keep going to New York while extremely sleep-deprived?), but I had a nice nap on the train.
I was then drafted into helping chop vegetables and such for what wound up being the smallest Thanksgiving dinner I can remember: just me, my parents, my grandmother, and Carrol, as Andrea and Victor (and their one-year-old) got stuck in traffic in Maryland. Dinner turned out quite well, with the turkey cooked perfectly, good stuffing, perfect roasted roots (carrots, purple potatoes, sweet potatoes, a parsnip, and a portobello mushroom for good measure), tatsoi sauteed with garlic, and the traditional Junior's cheesecake for dessert. (I ignore the candied yams (ick!) and broccoli cooked dead for my grandmother.) And Carrol liked the felted bowl.
The other exciting thing about the train ride was this:
I started my pair of Jaywalkers. I've decided to swap yarns for the heels and toes, now that I'm a few rows into the patterning and I haven't switched yet.
Just to check, though--it's normal for wooden size 1 dpns to warp a bit, right? And, you know, before they've been used for more than the cuff of one sock? That is, should I be worried that mine all look at least a smidgen wavy? They're lovely to knit with, though. (Also, I asked my dad to see if he could identify the wood, and he thought it might be teak.)
Back to the theme of Thanksgiving, though. I've been thinking that, on top of all of the basic health and family and friends things, I'm thankful for the very reason I've been too busy to enjoy Thanksgiving as thoroughly as I have in the past. I'm glad to be in grad school, doing work I love, and to be alive in a time and place when I can do so. And now I'm going to do some more work.
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