No Tofurky for me, thanks

Mmm Thanksgiving. Being a vegetarian at Thanksgiving is swell, actually. No need to eat the boring old turkey, and you can take as much stuffing as you want without getting odd looks. Even as a kid, I viewed the holiday meat as obligatory. I do admit that I miss the gravy, though. Maybe I'll whip up a packet of veggie gravy and bring it along. This year I am trying to contribute meaningfully to the meal, so I'm tackling the rolls. This side of the family always buys them so I'm going for the from-scratch route. My test runs this weekend went OK, one failed, resulting in rolls my friend mistook for cookies, the other was a success, so that's the one I'm duplicating tonight. Wish me luck.

So it should be a nice weekend: movie and dinner with the in-laws tonight, family fun at my parent's tomorrow, shopping and pedicures on Friday, soap making with a friend, (she has a soap-making business) on Saturday, and many lovely parties Saturday night. Hurrah!

Favorite holiday pleasures: seasonal beverages at Starbucks and Caribou (gingerbread, peppermint cocoa) and their cute little holiday cups, Christmas carols (top three are Carol of the Bells, Sleigh Ride, and O Holy Night), all the sneaky shopping talking-in-code business, mulled cider and gingerbread scented candles, and of course, Christmas cookies (love the peanut brittle). Oooooh... now I'm all excited! I can't wait!

Ann Bancroft is my hero

Yesterday I ended up pseudo-teaching a class... and since I suck at teaching (at least when I’m jumping in mid-semester), I was quite relieved to see that Ann Bancroft was coming to talk. And Ann was awesome... so comfortable talking to us about all parts of her trips, and in particular, her journals, which was the topic of the class that day. Can you imagine having one book to read on a hundred-day trip? (The one she took, on a friend’s recommendation, was Man’s Search for Meaning. She had to rip the cover off and was told to use it as toilet paper or burn it each day, but she didn’t, instead she and the five guys she was with ripped chapters out and passed them around.) On her last trip, she and Liv decided to bring poetry since you can mull over a poem longer, and her mom suggested that she ask her friends and family to submit one poem for her to talk. She talked about reading a poem and thinking about it all day long, as they pulled their 250-pound sleds over the ice. She also said how she asked her nieces and nephews to paint her skis to keep her motivated as she toils day after day... I got a bit choked up thinking about that. On one trip that was especially regimented in terms of what they could bring, the leader finally relented and allowed them to bring 100 oz. of their favorite candy. What would I possibly choose? I read her book Four to the Pole (aimed at middle school children I think) this morning... it was inspiring to read about how hard it was and how tired and depressed the team got at times, and how they had to keep going. The talk really left me waiting to take another long trip again... to see what I can accomplish and what I’m inspired to do out in the wilderness.

One thing I’ve noticed as I have met famous people (Michelle Kwan and Ann Bancroft), is that they are really aware that a lot of people don’t really care about what they do. Michelle said of the kids begging her for autographs that most will find it under the beds in a couple weeks and ask, “Who’s that?” And Ann sort of apologized for work, saying that it’s just what she likes to do and she knows it’s not a lot of people’s idea of fun.

I’m really stupid around famous people. All flustered and subservient and dumb.

Will Iowa be a nice pilsner?

Last night I drank the beers I vowed that I would on election night - one for every Midwestern state that Kerry took. Minnesota was a nice winter ale, Wisconsin, a bass that I enjoyed while singing On Wisconsin! between sips, and Michigan, a Vienna malt whose last few inches (or the U.P., as I was referring to them) where hard to get down.

I only other thing I'll say in reference to the election is to share what I saw when driving home through my neighborhood's downtown on Wednesday evening: an older man surrounded by Kerry signs and a boat he'd painted yellow with the slogan "Bush's swiftboat assault" or something similar in black. The sight of him holding vigil and feeling strongly enough about it to deface his boat comforted me.

Tomorrow I'm helping a good friend move out of her house and into an apartment because she's separating from her husband. I feel so very sad for her. It is times like these, though - such as when I'm at parties where most of the guests bring along their kids - that I realize I am not a kid myself anymore. I feel caught sometimes between my go-out-and-do-crazy-things side and my church-going-hanging-out-with-people-with-kids side. I usually feel like an impostor with the older people... as if I'm playing adult.

I voted!

I get a nice satisfying rush from having voted. Admittedly, it was a little sad at the polls, because there weren't too many boxes to fill in and I had that election day why-didn't-I-research-all-these-obsecure-offices-so-I-could-vote-knowledgably-like-the-responsible-citizen-I-consider-myself-to-be anxiety. Also the voting machine broke right in front of me, so it was a little disconcerting not to see my ballot zip confidently into the machine, but instead slip uneasily into a slot to be counted later.

I have this glorious fantasy of the results being announced at 2 a.m. and running outside to the dark wet street to be joined by my neighbors, cheering and cavorting, imbibe ourselves silly as we rejoice together the return to normalcy. I have that optimism that you get on election day when you can't image the converse coming true.