highlights of thanksgiving in washington d.c., as noted through the tryptophan haze

- My brother's coworker (who happens, because it's a very small world sometimes, to also be the mother of a friend of mine from college) and her teenage son camped out at Best Buy the night after Thanksgiving. Why? Because they were curious to see exactly who it is that camps out at Best Buy the night after Thanksgiving. And I thought, what if that was everyone's reason for camping out at stores before Black Friday? And the stores opened at 5:00am or whatever disgustingly ungodly hour, and all the people just turned around and went home? What if some really good missionaries for the anti-consumerist cause went and infiltrated the crowds and engaged people in critical self-reflection? Or if some guerilla contra dancers went and organized the crowd into a spontaneous dance? The possibilities are beautifully endless.

- Background: My mother came up with a great children's story some years ago when she was head of the local recycling center and doing a lot of environmental education programs. We've been telling her ever since that she should really make it into a children's book for publication. Well, the back story came out this weekend, the part where she came up with the story in the first place because a local artist had agreed to go with her for some environmentally-themed storytelling at an area elementary school, only the artist apparently had a bit of a love affair with the bottle, and when she went to his house to pick him up he was sleeping off a bender. So, faced with the daunting prospect of 40 small children expecting storytime, she came up with this tale on her own as she drove to meet them. Proving yet again that my mother is the coolest person ever.

- Missouri beat Kansas. (My brother is a proud Mizzou alumnus. Go Tigers!) (Confused? Clue: it was a football game.)

- I, a closet gadget geek, got a new cell phone that I'm only slightly obsessed with. It can flip open in two different directions. I'm tellin' ya. Next thing you know they'll be putting a man on the moon. (Yes, I admit it, I went shopping the day after Thanksgiving. I really wasn't going to, but the Totally Reasonable Excuse is that there's no Verizon store within 50 miles of where I live but there's a big one near my aunt and uncle's house, and the service there was really quick, and my old cell phone was half past dead, and yes I hate talking on the phone but when it's unavoidable I do like the battery in my phone to allow more than one 3-minute phone call per day before it konks out. I'm needy like that.)

- I saw some good friends and met several fascinating new people at the excellent Friday night dance at Glen Echo Park, one of my favorite places to dance anywhere. New people include a guy who dated my good friend Froggoddess for a while and who I recognized and introduced myself to because I'd seent a photo of him on her fridge in Massachusetts, as well as a fabulous dancer whose claim to being a writer (which, let's face it, is a claim often based on having a blog and/or a stack of rejection letters from obscure poetry journals) I later found to be impressively true.

- My Crazy Uncle and I went on a great hike on Saturday morning. I'm still sore, and I love it.

- My brother gave me a funny little knick-knack frog playing a violin (I have a thing for frogs). I wrapped it inside some cloths at the bottom of my carry-on suitcase so that it wouldn't get damaged going home. This caused great consternation to the airport security personnel manning the bag x-ray machine. I heard the one TSA guy call over another TSA guy, and I heard one of them say "frog?" and knew I was in for it. They opened the bag and dug out the knick-knack to confirm that "oh, that's a violin. We guessed at the frog, but it also kinda looked like a hunter holding a knife." Yeah, people make that mistake when they see me holding my violin, too. Happens all the time.*

All in all, for these and many other reasons, a Great Turkey Weekend. I hope yours was anywhere near as good. So much to be thankful for... the thoroughly confused cab driver who (barely) took me from the airport to the lot where my car was parked notwithstanding.

*Seriously, though, hats off to Hartford and BWI airports. Couldn't have been smoother or quicker, even regardless of it being Thanksgiving weekend.