Thanksgiving

Summary recap:

Thursday, redmed was on call, but at home. So despite a very nice invitation up to technolope and capital_ls for turkey we stuck around here and cooked up some wicked good salmon (dill and chive rub), sweet potatoes, and stuffing. Upon whipping out one of the pies we had bought, we were heard to exclaim “oh wow, these aren’t baked yet.” It was awesome.

Friday, no work whatsoever was done, except that I procured an XBox 360 to play Gears of War. Yes, this flies in the face of my grinch-like attitude from a few days ago. I am large, I contain multitudes. Friday night, Jen’s parents arrived at about 10pm, and we sat up into the wee hours giggling at how cute their dog is.

Saturday we rose late, and I made a monstrous batch of waffles. We devoured them, and then went to battleship cove over in Fall River. It’s an awesome display of naval hardware. We walked around on a PT boat, a destroyer, a submarine, and (naturally) a battleship. Excellent stuff. We came home and started cooking. 3lb of spice rubbed turkey breast (Thanksgiving is our one non-vegetarian feast day of the year), the last of the chard from the garden, the last of the sweet potatoes, coleslaw, stuffing, and fresh cranberry sauce. Oh yeah, and homemade ice cream and (baked) pie. It was a veritable food-orgy. We even broke out the nice china and serving dishes and pretended to be grown-ups.

We cracked a bottle of the Ivory Tower pinot grigio and it was good. It has a slight frizzante character, so I needed to let the wine sit for a bit longer before bottling … but it’s not a full-on sparking wine. That would have blown the corks out. It has clarified remarkably, giving a quite “brilliant” glass, except for the last one which had some yeast suspension. As with homebrew, there is apparently a little layer of yeast on the bottom. Homade wine should be decanted, apparently … or else we should pour out the last inch in honor of our fallen comrades. People claimed that they got notes of apple, apricot, and even a “nutty” aftertaste. This is certainly not one of the great wines of all time, but dammit … it’s been in the bottle a month and I made it. I can’t wait to try the Gemito Liberale.

Then we went to see “Casino Royale,” the new James Bond flick. First off, he’s a much more dark and physical bond than the previous incarnations. Since it’s ostensibly the beginning of the saga, he’s also a bit more vulnerable. It’s a neat combination. The Parkour scene at the beginning was a little contrived … but very fun. In fact, that goes for the whole movie. A little contrived … but great fun overall. This Bond fights well too. Good stuff.

Now, I think it’s off to breakfast and more fun. Tomorrow I plan to rise early and drive in to Boston to build a cluster, install some software, and pick up 8 SGI dual processor beasts for benchmarking. Ah, the life of the rockstar.