the after-parade

After we went to Philly's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the oldest Thanksgiving Parade in the country, we headed over to Greg's aunt's house in New Jersey for Thanksgiving.  I brought a pie and some green beans.  While the pie looked nice, it was not a success.  Underneath that sugary pecan crust lurked sugary pecan soup.  Everything else was great, however, especially the deliciously moist turkey, and Barb made pecan bars, so I think everyone was satisfied.  After dinner I collapsed on the couch next to Greg, ready to go home, crawl into my PJs, and enjoy the tryptophan coma.

But there was a surprise in store.  Greg's other aunt came up and asked us if we had plans for the evening, and then offered us tickets to that night's Eagle's game.  Tryptophan or no, the stadium is right down the street from our house, so we took them and had even more reason to give thanks.

Even though it was a cold night, we bundled up and stayed warm.  I was particularly excited to realize that the Eagles were playing the Cardinals, former Colts player Edgerrin James' new squad.  In fact, I remembered that I own an Edgerrin James jersey!  I was so excited to wear it to the game and cheer for Edge, until Greg forbade it and said he would not be responsible for drunken Eagles' fans who thought I was wearing a Giants jersey.  (Similar colors, bitter rivalry, blah blah blah.)

Guess what.  I wore the jersey.  I kept it hidden until the very end, when most people had taken shelter from the cold and we were able to sneak down very close to the Cardinals' bench.  I then whipped open my coat and flashed the field, screaming "I love you EDGE!"  Alas, he did not hear me.  And then some drunken Eagles fans yelled at me to "Get the $#%! out of here."  

A perfect Thanksgiving, all in all.

Thanksgiving Day Parade

Yesterday morning Greg and I got up and headed to Center City to catch the Thanksgiving Day Parade.  We followed it all the way up the parkway to the art museum.  Frosty was there.

Madeleine was there.

A crying elephant was there.

Dasher and Dancer were there.

And so was Santa!

hamming it up

This year, Greg and I took part in a sacred Thanksgiving tradition: spending enough money at the grocery store to get a free turkey.  Although we chose the ham.  I have to give Greg the credit--now that it's cold out and the Farmer's Market down the street isn't open, he has been doing most of the shopping.  He's the one with the car, after all.  He signed us up for the ShopRite card and monitored how much we needed to spend to get the free turkey.  Yesterday, I joined him for the final purchase.

Or final three purchases, as it turned out.  We needed to spend $100.  We went through the aisles, stocking up on pantry essentials.  Of course, when your pantry essentials are cans of beans, it takes a while to get to $100.  After filling our cart with what we needed, we estimated we had about $60 worth of food.  "We need to buy meat," I said.  This was tough, because I don't cook meat often, and when I do it's fish from Trader Joe's.  But then I remembered bacon! Oh how I love bacon.  It is delicious and greasy and easy and versatile.  I grabbed some bacon, and a thing of breakfast sausage to make with biscuit mix my sister sent me for my birthday. Greg picked up some Woolite and detergent (he also does the laundry) and we headed for the line.  We had spent $82.

I dispatched Greg to load the groceries in the car and promised I could find $18 worth of groceries.  Broccoli, brussell sprouts, spaghetti squash, apple cider.  At the last minute, I switched out the squash (we had bought acorn squash the first time through) for some parmesan cheese.  I met Greg in the free ham section and we carefully picked out the most expensive one, deciding on shank rather than butt.  (hehe).  As we walked toward the register, Greg longingly eyed the double-dipped peanut butter candy cakes from Tastykakes, but I told him he would be having plenty of pie in the days to come.

And then, as the lady behind the register rang us up, everything fell apart.  I had only spent $16! My math is terrible.  But I knew just what to do: I made a mad dash for the Tastykakes, figuring I could show my husband my appreciation for the fact that he does the grocery shopping and the laundry.  

So now there is a giant ham in our freezer.  I have never cooked a ham, I have generally only eaten ham at Easter, and I vaguely resent it for taking up so much space and for forcing me to buy Tastykakes.*  But it was free.  That's all that matters.

*They are very tasty, but WHY is it spelled with a K?  There is nothing clever or amusing about that!

Oklahoma

I spent the last weekend in Oklahoma.  That is not a typo.  My dad was in charge of the National Missionary Convention, which met in Tulsa.  It was a really nice weekend--lots of catching up with old friends from around the world, listening to people speak about important issues, and catching the world premiere of a friend's movie.   

However, and I say this with love, whoever at Baxter's restaurant was responsible for running our bank card 30 times in one day and draining our account really harshed my buzz.

yum

One other thing we did while Andrea was here was visit the Italian Market.  She was quite confused by this advertisement for oven roasted boneless pigs (seriously, how do they do that?) so I had to laugh when there was a picture of the ad in the newspaper today.  They ran a story about the future of the market, which can be found here.

mi hermana

Saturday morning.  I was doing homework.  The phone rang.  It was Andrea.  The doorbell rang. It was Andrea.

Apparently, she had Monday off and had decided, Friday evening, that she wanted to do something more than laze around her apartment for the long weekend.  My mom's mad Priceline skillz helped in finding an inexpensive flight, and by noon Saturday the Philadelphia region was blessed with her shining presence.

Greg and I were pretty shocked, and also delighted, by the impromptu visit.  We managed to fit in dinner at Standard Tap in Northern Liberties, a restaurant none of us had been to, a driving and heavily abridged ghost tour ("That's Independence Hall.  It's haunted.  That's Washington Square.  It's haunted.  That's the Pine Street Cemetery.  It's haunted."), some Saturday Night Live election coverage, a Colts win, dinner at Mercy Street with Andrea's friend Amy, and a visit to Temple.

And three exceedingly goofy pictures.

I voted!

After being sick for the last few days, it felt good to have something exciting to get up for today.  I took a shower (it had been awhile) and walked over to the back of South Philly High, where I cast my vote.  The funny thing is, when I told the woman at the table my name, she said, "Oh, are you Greg's wife?" and then proceeded to tell me that whenever Greg drives down her street, she yells "Greg Cesare!"  You see, shortly after moving in we found out that a woman who grew up with Greg in Magnolia lives on Mercy Street, just one block over.  And apparently she started this thing of yelling "Greg Cesare!" whenever he drives by.  The woman at the voting booth told me that once she saw me driving by and said, "Mrs. Cesare!" very quietly.  The whole thing was very bizarre and kind of cool but certainly not what I expected to encounter at the polls.

Before I headed over, I took a look at the websites of some of the people running for other offices, and my favorite was by far this one.  If you spend a little time there, you'll notice that not only does the site look like it was designed by a schizophrenic teenager, but that Mr. Muhammad is both a "disciple of the word of Christ" and a Muslim, and features quotations like "Mike Muhammad is brainwashed.  He 100% believes he can make a difference. - Mike Muhammad."  Unfortunately, I think that Greg was so entertained by this website that he is indeed going to cast his vote for Mr. Muhammad.

Vote!

Disappointing Halloween

First there was the pumpkin, which turned into a festering wound on our doorstep.  Then there were my lungs, which also turned into festering wounds during the week leading up to Halloween, preventing me from giving ghost tours on the ghostliest night of all.  It's not the correct season for the exclamation, but Bah Humbug!

Phillies Phever

As much as I despise cutesy spellings, I had to go with Phillies Phever for this post title, because that is exactly what the last week has been round these parts.  Last Saturday, Greg and his friend Jim went to the first home game in this World Series.  Because of the rain delay, it started after 10 and finished close to 2.  And then they walked home.  That was only the beginning of the madness.  Sunday night Dave and Erin came over to watch the Phils win again, meaning that Monday night was their chance to clinch, to win the whole thing.

Monday night Greg came home and decorated like mad man.  Dave and Erin returned, bringing Erin's sister Megan with them.  So for those keeping track, this was our third game and third set of guests in three nights.  (I'm counting Saturday since Greg and Jim at at Mercy Street before heading to the game.)

The Phils took an early lead in the Monday night game, so we headed out to the nearby Adobe Cafe to celebrate with other fans.  It was packed, and I even had my picture taken by a reporter for the paper, but it didn't make it into print.  However, the weather had other plans for us, and millions of screaming, drunken fans in every corner of the city were suddenly silenced by a rain delay.

We headed home, and tried to get some sleep Tuesday night.  The game picked up again Wednesday at the bottom of the 6th inning.  It all went so quickly from there--a few hits, a few runs, a few strikeouts, and before we knew it, we were running down Broad Street hugging and high fiving people we had never met, watching impromptu fireworks, and hoping we didn't see any overt vandalism.  (We didn't, but people did go nuts in some parts of the city.)

Here I am high fiving people--I made it my mission to get as many germs on my hand as humanly possible.

Greg's trying to talk to someone, but cell phone service was impossible.

Up next: the Parade!