My Thanksgiving Holiday

I think I'm having my post-holiday slug day. I barely dragged myself out of bed this morning because the bed was so cozy and warm, and I couldn't think of any urgent reason why I absolutely had to get up. Now I'm trying to persuade myself that I must get groceries. I have Thanksgiving leftovers, but I'm lacking one or two crucial ingredients for each thing that I could do with the leftovers. To make things even more fun, I discovered while searching the pantry to see if maybe one of those crucial items might be hiding in the back that a jar of molasses had fallen on its side and oozed onto the shelf. That meant cleaning the pantry, which ended up being a bit of a decluttering as I got rid of those things that lurk in the back, long past their expiration date.

I had a good holiday, which I started early by going with some friends Tuesday night to the fall concert of the One O'Clock Lab Band, a student jazz band that regularly gets nominated for Grammy Awards for best jazz recordings. I also discovered a restaurant in my neighborhood that night. On the outside, it looks like just another restaurant in a strip mall. Then you step inside and are in a New York City Italian restaurant. It has similar dimensions and decor and atmosphere. I almost felt like if I looked out the window, I'd see Greenwich Village. Italian is my favorite thing to cook, but now I know that if I'm craving Italian and don't want to cook, I can walk a few blocks and go to New York. It's small enough that it's the rare kind of restaurant where I'm willing to eat alone.

Then we had a real family Thanksgiving for the first time in about six years, since my brother and his girlfriend came. There was a bit more work and less lazy relaxing than when it's just my parents and me, but it felt more like a family holiday. I did discover through playing with my mom's blood pressure machine and my parents' elliptical machine with heart monitor that while I'm thin and have great muscle tone, I'm terribly out of shape. It looks like I need to exercise more regularly than just in ballet class and the occasional long walk. I've also noticed that I have a bad habit of holding my breath when I'm concentrating on something. I've heard of sleep apnea, but not thought apnea. Now I'm trying to remember to breathe. That's not supposed to be something you have to think about.

This was more of a weekend for sports than for movies, but I was tired enough Saturday night to actually watch a Disney Channel movie, and it wasn't that bad. The movie was Geek Charming and was about a film geek who needs to make a documentary for a film festival student contest that could win him a Hollywood internship, and he decides to make an expose on popularity, focusing on the school's queen bee whose life goal is to win their school's equivalent of prom queen. Along the way, he learns that she has hidden depths and she learns that there's a difference between being popular and having friends. It was rather cute without being too irritating, and they managed to sell me on an outcome I was dreading at the start of the movie. Plus, unlike almost every other Disney Channel thing ever, they didn't feel the need to cram in songs performed by the stars (unless that was what was in the soundtrack I didn't pay attention to). I'm a fan of musicals, but I'm not a fan of the Disney Channel teen starbots whose voices are so weak that they're Autotuned into sounding inhuman, just so they'll have something to play on Radio Disney. And it was nice to see teens aspiring to something other than being rock stars.

Now I simply must drag myself out so I can eat this week.