Thanksgiving in the 'Burgh

First of all, check this Times article out. It's full of really cool things you can do for free with your cell phone, including make long distance calls, set up personalized voice mail greetings for individual people, and text message Google.

Okay, now on to Thanksgiving:

I had Wednesday off from school, which was an extremely welcome thing. I relaxed all day, got bored, even!, and commenced the cooking of the Thanksgiving feast. Actually, it started with the cooking of dinner that night, followed by baking of cornbread (for the dressing), then baking of penguin-shaped gingerbread cookies.

When all that was done, I took the 20-lb turkey out of its wrapping and brined it. This was an endeavor that I'll never forget: Since the turkey was so big, but the fridge didn't have enough space for a bucket, I had to soak my turkey in a large heavy-duty trash bag. Getting the turkey into the bag was fine, but after I added all of the water, salt, and seasonings, the bag weighed about 40 pounds... and TORE. So there I was, standing at the sink, in front of me a very large turkey was sitting in a very large amount of salt-&-herb water, spewing. I grabbed another bag and carefully put the first inside of it. Then I heaved the whole shebang out of the sink into a very large roasting pan, and then transferred it into the fridge. Phew!

All that madness being done, I cut and cubed a bunch of Yukon Gold potatoes and put them in a saucepot full over saltwater to soak, and was done for the night.

The twins came early the next morning, and we watched the first three episodes of Heroes as I began dinner preparations: stuffing the turkey and putting it in the oven, making the dressing, roasting garlic and mashing them into the potatoes.

People showed up around 6pm, and the festivities began. Everyone brought delicious dishes. There was more dessert than the mind could comprehend. We ate, chatted, played with the Konig kids. Gerhardt set up his Gamecube, which was popular for about an hour before Gerhardt (and the Gamecube) had to leave. We moved into the living room and set up a fun game of Taboo. Taboo is entertaining when played with a bunch of med students because the clues are inevitable about med school. "Actin! Myosin" = muscle. "We're tired and you can tell because..." = bloodshot eyes. My team lost pretty humiliatingly, with props to Paavani, Jeff, and David A., who rocked the other team hardcore.

Everyone was exhausted by midnight, and so it ended.

I've been meaning to post about an Ethics lecture we had awhile ago. I'll try to get to that soon. Stay tuned!

Thanks Angie & Sarah for making my Turkey Day awesome awesome! Gobble gobble! Waffle waffle!