great day

beat last year's race time by 1 minute and 15 seconds. more impressive is that i've run this race 8 years in a row, and just got my third fastest time. cool, but not hard considering some of my earlier race times.

came home and cleaned up the house in preparation for Thanksgiving. it went quickly and before we knew it, the turkey was done and our family had arrived.

daughter loves it when we have company. she has new people to play with in her own surroundings. my two nieces, ages 12 and 9, love playing with daughter. once everyone arrived, i made the first fire in our fireplace. i'm using ancient wood that was left behind by the previous owners. it was light lighting balsa wood soaked in gasoline. POOF! luckily i had some newer wood to balance it out.

the dinner was spectacular. wife's first bird was well-cooked. not over or under...just right. the sidedishes were all good too. all the classics. most notable was a cranberry salad my wife made out of pineapple, apple, cranberry and CRYSTAL LIGHT?! i know. it makes no sense, but it rocked.

post dinner my nieces were digging the train and we hung out in the basement with daughter. my nieces are smart and essentially taught me a few things about the train. 12 year old noted the transformer and track are a circuit. she just was not sure which kind of a circuit. as their uncle i felt it my duty to help clarify, but visits to ask jeeves and howstuffworks.com did not bear us any fruit. maybe we SHOULD get a set of encyclopedias. hmmm. 9 year old figured out that the train whistle comes from the coal car. this is why the whistle was "not working" when we only used the engine. we did this so they could crank up the speed without wrecking the train. they still did of course. we also dumped enough liquid smoke into the train that the smell was noticed upstairs.

it was great fun hanging out with my in-town family. we had an excellent thanksgiving. and now LEFTOVERS! :-) yum.