Turkey

So, every year, or thereabouts, we usually head over to a family friend's house for Thanksgiving. This basically stems from the fact that for the longest time, it was just the four of us over here, my parents and my brother. Obviously now the family has grown, but there are still no uncles or aunts who can visit. They're mostly all in Pakistan.

Anyway, last year at this time I was in Pakistan and getting to know Maria. Maybe some of you remember that. The Thanksgiving before that was the first time we had a get-together with friends where there was no turkey. I was not at all happy about this. To me, Thanksgiving is not Thanksgiving without a large fowl nicely baked. Thus, this year I was concerned again about the possible lack of turkey.

So on Monday I called up the hostess of the party and asked outright. She said, "No, we're not having a turkey." Why? "Well, we couldn't find a halal turkey."

Oh.

Maybe she could tell the sadness in my voice after that. Maybe she knew what this meant to me. Whatever it was, by the next day all was alright again in the world. I got home from work, and my mother told me that they had found a turkey.

Nice.

So last night we were there, and yes, the feast was good. And it was plentiful. All of my favorite animals were represented. Fish, cow and ... turkey.

Earlier in the day, I managed to keep with tradition and played football with the ol' high school friends. We've been doing this ever since we left high school. Normally we play on Friday or Saturday, but this year we pushed things up a bit to accomodate more people. While we only played two-hand shove, it was still a little messy thanks to the fast-moving storm that soaked the field only minutes before.