The Actual Thanksgiving Day

We’ve all fallen head over heels in love with this house. It’s spacious and quiet and well-stocked and everything works. It has the fewest number of notes-for-renters (be sure to keep this closed; this doesn’t work; turn this that way to make it open, that sort of thing) that I’ve ever seen. It has 3 bedrooms, but also has a den and a closet over the stairs that would be good for sleeping too. And just the right number of Christmas decorations. Also, more hooks for hanging things on (jackets, towels) than you can imagine – and I know you can imagine a lot. There are 10 in the downstairs bathroom alone.

I got up and went for a short walk to the beach and to the market next to the fun cycles to get milk. It was a beautiful clear day, very cold, and I found a secret back way to the beach that suddenly comes out into a wonderful view of Haystack rock.

When I got home we were preparing to chat with Josh, for whom Thanksgiving was almost over. It is an odd experience chatting halfway across the world – you have to learn to wait for the other person to respond, and their facial expression doesn’t change with what you’re saying. Josh seemed well and had eaten some special army thanksgiving food. The tent he was in is lined with foil for insulation (so they can keep it cold), and at first some of us thought it was a window looking out on a snowy forest. Which it wasn’t, of course.

After our chat Dave made pancakes eggs and sausages, which we happily ate. I was on dish duty as always, but there is a dishwasher here, hooray! So cleanup didn’t take very long. We’d planned on a later breakfast but we were all starving, so we decided to have an earlier breakfast and a snack in the afternoon. So we all bundled up and went for a walk on the beach down to the fancy market at Tolovana (in a location where at least 3 restaurants failed) and got some cheese and crackers, which has been Dave’s and my traditional Thanksgiving dinner for the past two years. We also got Mama Lil’s pickled green beans, which are delicious.

When we got back it was time to Escape the Room – or, as the manufacturer (Kosmos) calls it, Exit the Game. This was our second game from them, and it was as delightful and clever as the first one. This was a difficulty 2, and with one exception we got all of the riddles solved without much difficulty, but it still took almost an hour and a half and all of our brains to get it down. It turns out there is an app that goes with it that shows a timer and plays “ambient music to set the scene”, which just added to the fun. If you’re looking for a fun activity for 2-5 people, check out these games. The only downside is you can only play them once. In the past we’ve been able to pass them on to other people, but this one you destroy as you’re playing.

We had an early dinner reservation at Bridgewater Bistro, so we got on the road not long after we escaped. We think this might have been their first thanksgiving, and they’d badly miscalculated how long each party would stay. When we arrived we were the third group waiting for our reserved table, and the number continued to grow. The food was excellent, but the service was slow, and getting a drink from the bar was difficult. Also the “death by chocolate” cookie was a sugar cookie with no discernable chocolate. How can they say that? However, the mashed potatoes and stuffing were excellent, as were the proteins that came with them (duck for me, turkey for Dave, salmon for Reagan and Jen, and a quinoa-mushroom patty for Tim that may have been the best one), and the chocolate mousse ice cream and pumpkin-cranberry bread pudding were terrific.

After we got home Dave and I took a walk. I brought every warm thing I own, but he didn’t, and it’s cold out – especially when the wind kicked up. So we walked very fast into town and were surprised to see that the folks dining at EVOO were already out. When we got home it was time for games in our wonderful house.

Tonight’s puzzler: why is earl gray tea make me think of the internet?