Lots of catching up to do, I guess… Corinna arrived Wednesday night, after a surprisingly “short” bus trip. We expected the holiday traffic to slow her trip considerably, but that demon never manifested. She arrived very early, and we got back to Hopatcong before my father had even gone to bed! I had to do some turkey/brine preparations when we first got back, but that took only about an hour. I put the turkey in the bucket around 11:30pm, and we went to bed soon after. Around 4am I woke up to flip the turkey, I had the turkey flipped up in the air, and the bastard (bitch) slipped out of my hands and into the brine, sending a mushroom cloud of toxic turkey juice onto me, the dishes, the counter, and just about everything else. I cleaned off the counter with bleach, moved all the (formerly) clean dishes into the sink, and went back to bed, aggravated.

I got my 9am wake up call from the ‘rents and strutted out to see what was going on. Dad and I got to work on the turkey, pulling it from the brine, rinsing and drying it, and putting it on the rack. The oven was ready to go, the probe thermometer placed, and the turkey was rubbed down with butter (not canola — we were out). Thanks to the magic of convection, the 22.5lb turkey was ready 3 hours later. After a 30 minute resting I got to work carving the turkey.

It was a very big Thanksgiving celebration this year. In addition to my immediate family and Corinna, we hosted Grammy & Grampy, Uncle Jeff and two of his three children, Chris and Andy. The spread was fantastic, it was really a whole-family effort. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food once again, and we received many compliments on the turkey. The new oven worked like a freaking champ, it’s so nice to not have to deal with ancient equipment. I can’t wait until the kitchen is actually renovated!

Friday night “The Gang” finally went to see The Matrix Revolutions. I had expected a horrible movie, but what I ended up with was about as good as the second movie: Some bad spots, but overall enjoyable. It was nice to see the trilogy end, but I think Corinna was right when she stated that the second and third movie should have been one awesome sequel. Perhaps it is time for someone to “Phantom Edit” them. Regardless of all that, this movie just reinforced my impulse to ignore other people’s opinions of movies. People (both critics and friends) made this film out to be a crime against nature, when instead it was a flawed but enjoyable movie. All-in-all, though, neither of the sequels approach the first in terms of quality or “specialness”.

On Saturday, Corinna, Chuck, and I rented Poolhall Junkies, which was a fun movie. Christopher Walken made it though, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it without him.

Sunday I took Corinna to the PATH station for her return to Boston, which sucked. It was good having her here for the holiday, though! After I dropped her off I returned home and cleaned a bunch of projects off my computer that were all 90% done. One of them was finish making the latest World Poker Tour DVD. I had made it before Corinna arrived, but I noticed a problem with the media that Adam sent me. It turns out that the Optodisc 4X DVD-R media he bought is pretty damn unreliable at anything above 1x, which sucks but at least it isn’t completely toast. It’s going to take awhile to burn discs now, especially since I don’t feel comfortable skipping the post-burn verification now that I don’t trust the media. I ended up coastering about 4-5 discs yesterday trying to track down the problem and find a working solution.

You know your family is a little different when you wake up, go to the kitchen for a drink, and see this book sitting on the dining room table.