Thanksgiving's start

Little thrill on Thursday morning: The last major record company apparently reached an agreement with Launch, so those of you with personalized Launchcast stations (like mine) can now hear on your station all those artists on A&M, Geffen, Motown, Mercury, and other associated labels who you couldn't have heard on your station in years.

Apparently Launchcast thinks I now need to hear Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" as many times as technically possible.

Turkey Day!

Windy, cloudy day. Was looking things up online, reading, trying to think of something to research, wandering along virtual primrose paths, when I checked my e-mail and saw an order from my friend Rory to get offline and call her on the phone. So I did.

Her: "What are you doing for Thanksgiving?"

Me: "Oh, I'll be here, probably frying up a turkey leg later on."

"That's ridiculous. You're coming over here."

So after a few hours of resting and watching the clouds outside thinning out and becoming much less scary-looking, I was picked up by an old friend and driven to her mother's house in the late afternoon. The clouds glowed in the late-appearing sun, the moon hung large in the sky, the other drivers were chased off the road by the maniac behind the wheel (just kidding! really!), and we finally arrived (safely! really!).

Though I've been to the family's house for holidays in the past, I'd forgotten just how much of a production those meals are. It's impressive. Oh, and the food was great: baked turkey, fried turkey, baked ham, standing roast, stuffing, yams with marshmallows, macaroni & cheese, greens, yellow squash, canberry sauce, potato salad, rolls, cornbread muffins, sweet potato pie, and quite possibly something I'm forgetting. The company was good, watching them watching the football game was amusing, and it was a very pleasant meal.

Then I got to watch The Washing of the Dishes, which was more amusing than Rory realizes. Somehow we ended up singing "The Twelve Days of Christmas," some of us more off-key than others. I had to rest from the excitement for a while, so I relaxed in the living room while people there watched the Chicago-Dallas game on TV.

Eventually it was time for us to leave, so we grabbed some styrofoam trays and bags for snagging some of the mountains of leftovers--and then the lights went out. I forgot to mention that it was a very windy day, didn't I? Well, it was. Whether the power went out because of the wind or because everyone in the neighborhood had all their lights on was unclear, but the power was definitely out. Someone found a flashlight and non-electric lights so we could all see who was where, Rory's mother quickly had someone bring in the battery-powered TV so they could watch the rest of the game, and we finally managed to get ready to get ready again.

Rory said to her niece, "This gives us something else to be thankful for. You know that some people lost power in the middle of dinner, but it didn't happen until we were all done and getting ready to leave." Rory said to me, "This gives you something to write about in your LiveJournal." Heh.

Then Rory and her niece drove me home, giving Rory and me the chance to tell her niece all about '80s pop culture ("Yes, U2 really are that old") and giving the niece another chance to tease us about how old we are. That was fun.

Went to bed early on Thursday night after having a very good day.

One last scare

A couple of hours ago I was feeling headachy and thinking this night would be a good night to go to sleep early. As I went to put some clothes in the washing machine before preparing for bed, I noticed a rather insistent BEEP-BEEP-BEEP, BEEP-BEEP-BEEP, BEEP-BEEP-BEEP. So I went through the house, wondering if some appliance or other was having a crisis. Nope, nothing that I could find. Opened the back door--sound definitely louder outside. Good, at least it's not coming from inside. Probably not the sound of my impending doom, then.

Listening out the back & front doors, couldn't tell where the noise was coming from exactly. Wondered for a bit if I should call the police, but figured that with all the other houses on the street being brightly lit, surely someone else must have called by now.

Heard the sirens, saw the lights of a fire engine coming up our street. Hmm, why is it stopping in front of our house? Went out to speak with the nice fireman. No, sorry, I wasn't the one who called you and the alarm wasn't coming from our house; but it is very loud here, as you might know if you weren't standing right next to your rather loud truck.

Well, the firemen left, not being willing to knock on every door on the street in order to find the source of the sound which neither they nor the police had located. Still, there was the BEEP-BEEP-BEEP, BEEP-BEEP-BEEP, BEEP-BEEP-BEEP going on, and after a few minutes I decided I knew which general direction it was coming from. Called the local police and explained the situation, then went back outside to make sure I hadn't misled them.

One street away, the fire truck went down the street. One street away, the fire truck went up the street. Then I walked down the alley toward the assembled volunteers and realized where the noise was coming from.

"You say there's a Halloween attraction here?" "Yes, there in the woods--you can see a circus tent through the trees."

A smoke detector at the bottom of a trash can under a haunted circus tent in the woods gave us one last scare for the season. The firemen were kind enough to remove the battery.