What the crap are "snow showers"?

Does that mean its supposed to snow tonight?

nutty.

Behold the mighty Gobbler, who by his invisible power and with his excellent wisdom made the world...

I browned him skin-side down in a pan and then simmered him in almond mole.  So tasty I almost cried.  Thankful are we for the miracle of the eucharist.

We've been feasting for three days now (sweet potatoes three different ways!  both dot and feather Indian versions!).  And I've allowed for an one-week exception to my ouevo-lacto-pescetarianism for two, I think, very good reasons:

1) Mr. Turk Turkleton is the centerpiece of my favorite holiday.

2) My main reasons for swearing off land-dwellers (both eating them and other activities too such as foot races and board games - I kick ass at Stratego when my opponent is a cephalopod) is environmental/political.  And our turkey here is from the university.  So he's local.  AND he was previously a research subject for the animal husbandry school.  So he's recycled.  Yes, he might taste a bit like growth hormone.

Also, since I've eaten meat for 25 years of my life I don't really feel a strong need to be inflexible now.  Dogmatism to the point of alienating people is for PETA.  Or Christina Firpo (Hi Christina!  I think you're pretty!).

From such discussions of dogmatism we can now segue into our daily Moneywatch 2008 coverage (we do this through in the continuing-to-promote-an-unregulated-free-market-capitalism-in-the-face-of-complete-global-economic-collapse-at-the-APEC-summit headlines).  I'd like to announce that, after 18 months of guilt and self-loathing, I have finally paid off the balance on my credit card.  No lack of consumer confidence here!  Don't you worry kids, I'll fix the economy.  Black Friday has arrived right on time.  Oooh, and look here!  Restoration Hardware has sent me a gift card for 20% off everything in their store!  Who wants vintage hobbycrafts for Christmas?  We will solve this financial crisis through our purchase of one luxury plush teddy bear at a time (eight designer colors!).  And then we will promise to save for real this time (if not U.S. Treasury bonds then gold bullion, in a sock, under the bed).

So I hope you are all having a wonderful Thanksgiving, and that, in the great American tradition, are consuming until your eyes roll back in your head.

I just sat across from a Pulitzer Prize winning historian while he ate the biggest steak I've ever seen.  I think it was fifteen inches in diameter.  Like a meat frisbee.  Or a manta ray.  I challenged him to eat it in twelve minutes or less but without the proper incentive (his meal was free either way I suppose) the challenge alone was not enough.  I guess nineteen year old boys do in fact grow up.  And win Pulitzer Prizes!

Totally unrelated, I was invited to beer tasting party over the weekend that was kind of amazing.  It was mostly faculty from the English department so the descriptions of the beer - we all had to read to the group our thoughts on the beer after each round - were, well they weren't simply "this beer was a little nutty, probably Newcastle."  No, no.  They were long-winded descriptions along the lines of: 

"This beer is the other woman.  Fun, interesting, exhilarating.  You forget about your drab home life and bitter marriage, your lame children.  And yet (sigh)... not worth it in the end."  

Or "This beer is not the student that doesn't do the reading or pay attention in class and yet shows up in the office hours on the last day of class to argue for a grade other than a B.  No, this beer  is the student that is equally lazy but doesn't grub for grades and you give an A- to out of spite."  

Or "If this beer were an actor it would be Bill Paxton.  If this beer were a noble gas it would be Argon." (this was my roomie's description of Stella Artois I think)

Hilarious.  Also way too much pressure to be clever.

Yesterday I was chased by a basset hound.

Tomorrow my brother is coming to visit!

Life just gets better and better.

Gave the Holocaust lecture in my modern German history class today.  Broke my heart a little.  The powers that be want me to teach a whole course on the Holocaust in the fall and, well, its going to be tough.  I told one of my colleagues that I'm going to need a hug every once in a while just to keep my morale up.  I had to get a new liner for my shower curtain today (because my brother is arriving on Friday!  And my current liner is grody with mold!) and, in an effort to cheer myself up, also bought a new curtain with a giant photograph of penguins.  And not those aloof - frigid? - celebrities of the species, the Emperors.  No, no, these are the happy-go-lucky Adelie penguins.  Cheerful little, Cuban-accented (according to the film Happy Feet), sidekicks of the Antarctic.  Nothing like a shiny vinyl impulse buy to make me feel  a little better about genocide.

I arrive in LA on the evening of December 10th!

Pick me up!

Pittsburgh gave me a rash.

Its super-itchy and splotchy.  Like howlie rot.  All around my neck and down my right arm.

Sucks.

Otherwise the conference in Pittsburgh was great!  I got to spend a lot of time with a very dear friend, my favorite jelly donut.  Got a big hug from mein Doktorvater.  Spoke with a couple university presses about promise rings/early contracts, and they seemed at least open to the idea which is enormously exciting.  The airport shuttle driver called me "small cheese" as in "alright small cheese, here we are at the Omni" (he then said he would pay to talk to me long distance about southern bbq - cute).  That's right.  I am small cheese.  But cheese nonetheless.

And can we get a subdued golf applause for Mississippi's showing in the election please?  The presidential race was much closer than expected (kind of close to a single digit spread) and really, most of  us raging liberals here were quite pleased that the state wasn't called for McCain at noon.  In fact, it was the last of the deep south to be called.  Babies scoot before they crawl before they step.

Another lesson learned on election night: don't drink things handed to you by Greig or Scott.  Especially if they involve gin.  Especially if you have to teach the Protestant Reformation first thing the next morning.  Even days later, while calmly sipping Iron City Beers mit meine Kollegen the ghostly scent of gin haunted me.  Oh the humanity.  I still hear the screaming.

Just finished voting for my man Barack!

Went pretty well.  The A-K line was only about 30 people long when I got there so we moved along quickly.  Other than the lack of signage indicating the location of the polling place on the main road (and this is really no surprise as this part of the county has a real aversion to street signs, I can go on and on about it, how it keeps people down, how it keeps people out, how it means all your directions include phrases like "where the old Southern Baptist church used to be" or "just past the dead oak" or "after the sidewalk disappears") and the lack of "I voted!" stickers (I won't lie, I was looking forward to cashing in on my free Starbucks coffee), it all ran smoothly.  I mean, they had those of us "ethnic" looking people out voting in an empty field, writing our choices down on post-it notes, but they promised they'd count them.  

No. No, that's not true.  

Musgrove for Senate!  

From awkward to troubling to kind of terrible, in that order

1. Got off on some tangent with my students about how I only use the first stall in the women's restroom on the second floor of Allen Hall because the others splash water all over you when you flush them.  I mean, I figured out right away.  Like.  Right after the first time it happened... I mean, its not like I'm still covered in my own filth.  I mean, yeah.

2. Trying to dance at a friend's Halloween party in my giant turkey costume.  Nothing makes you feel more like a seventh wheel than when the other six people dancing are couples and you're the only one not dressed like a human being.

3. Apparently our neighborhood is a trick-or-treating hotspot.  Like parents shuttle their kids in from the hinterlands for our diversity of candy options and short distances between doorsteps (or at least a favorable ratio of those two factors).  So we were slammed.  And often by kids that either didn't have the money or the time to put much into their costumes.  Which is fine, no fault of theirs.  But there's something really really disturbing about opening the front door to seven children staring at you rather desperately with their regular clothes on but their faces smeared with fake blood.