I’m thankful for the weekend in a big way.  It was pretty great Ellen special on Saturday night.  It was just a huge reminder of how much I hate sitting home alone watching TV.  But there was so much else going on with my four-day weekend, I now have the issue that blog hiatuses create.  Too much to mention, and no clever way to mention it without resorting to bullet points.

So I’ll make big squishy paragraphs instead!

On Thursday, my parents and I took a pre-Thanksgiving dinner calorie walk-off at the wildlife center where we saw wild turkeys, deer, and the famous foxes!  Then we created a vegetarian feast that couldn’t be beat, I even got my parents to eat both kale and quinoa, and they actually tolerated it with all their hearts.  My favorite dish was the Rustic Applesauce.  I highly recommend, especially in leftover form.  That night, we were sad to not have SisterAlyson with us, as she would have rounded out our numbers so we could play Taboo.  Instead, we were stuck with Scategories, and under the category “things in this room” I wrote “The Spirit of SisterAlyson.”  That made up a lot for the fact that Mom and Dad were not happy when I played the word “Jesus” under the category “fictional characters.”  However, it was agreed that was not as bad as when I played the word “pig” under the category “things in the room” the time that SisterAlyson’s boyfriend was there.  I think he knew I meant it all in good fun, and that I show my respect for those in law enforcement by kidding, but we haven’t played Scategories with him since…  In addition to Scategories, we also played Clue, which is not as fun as the movie, although I might only be saying that since Dad won.  We also watched the movie “Son of Rambow” which is adorable family fare, although it would probably be improved upon by an un-scratched disk that didn’t skip every 20 minutes or so.

On Friday, I drove home and refrigerated all the leftovers.  It’s a novel thing, leftovers.  You don’t get that when you dine out, as we are so used to doing.  I headed to the YMCA to swim off that extra helping of pumpkin pie, and damn it felt good.  Then I went shopping, but not at the mall, at the local business district.  You know one thing that really bugs me?  It’s all the “black Friday” talk about how that’s the crowdedest shopping day of the year.  It’s only true at the malls.  If you want to support your local stores, they would really like to have your business on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and you’ll find that it’s a lot more calm, with virtually no lines anywhere.  As our economy slows and people are giving more thought to where they put their dollars, remember, it’s your local businesses who are counting on you to keep them afloat.  And once I got off my soapbox, I sort of hid it in my trunk as I headed to the mall to see “Australia.”  By early evening, it was pretty quiet as I walked around the stores while waiting for my movie to start.  I don’t have much to say about the movie other than it was pretty entertaining on a “Reign of Fire” level, and I really, really wish I hadn’t gotten the coupon for the free soda, and I really, really wish I hadn’t finished that soda in the first 20 minutes of the almost-three-hour movie.

As for Saturday and Sunday, I did nothing more notable than grocery shop, go to the gym, clean, and watch many, many episodes of “Mad Men.”  And that brings the fair month of November to a close and thrusts us right into the Christmas season.  I’m celebrating with an advent calendar made up of my leftover Halloween candy tacked to a corkboard.

UPDATE: This is the calendar:

advent-calendar-0021

The 440 delicious calories of that vegan pumpkin cookie are marked for the day before my swim meet. And yeah, I got the Reese's special for the holiday.