Yup, still killing it over on the Instagram Stories.

(Sunday Paper, Volume II, Issue 48)

I love Thanksgiving.

(I know I told you that last year but this year I was able to write it while not confined to my bed for five straight days.)

This year the Thanksgiving plans changed a little bit - and late.

You might think, for someone who is such a creature of routine, that would be upsetting.

Not on Thanksgiving weekend.

Nothing could go wrong on Thanksgiving weekend.

Well, OK. One thing could go wrong on Thanksgiving weekend. Remember last year, when I was so sick I had to cancel three comedy shows?

But this year (knock on wood) has been different.

We spent Thanksgiving Day at my sister-in-law's house. (Remember her?) That was the plan all along. BUT....my sister (remember her?) had a baby last week. So instead of a relaxing, nothing-going-on Thanksgiving weekend here at home, we squeezed in a trip to New York to meet our niece.

Why was this no problem?

It's Thanksgiving weekend!

There's so much time. I still got to do my favorite Thanksgiving things - eat my face off, watch football until my face fell off, start putting up Christmas decorations, etc. - even with the extra New York trip mixed in.

We originally planned on laying low because Kathy was going to be just back from Germany and we didn't want to over-schedule things for when she'd likely be exhausted. Turns out, she was still exhausted, but had two car rides to sleep it off.

My sister-in-law cooked a great meal on Thursday. (And I got to carve the turkey. I was nervous about it. [She came into the living room for someone who had experience and was interested in carving the turkey. I was 0-for-2, and still somehow ended up with the job, but I'm glad I did.] Turns out I am a very good turkey carver.)

And then on Friday we ended up enjoying some Thanksgiving leftovers at my mom's after we met a beautiful new baby.

And we were back Friday night with a whole weekend in front of us.

Thanksgiving is the best.

Writing

*Had to get the work done early in the week, what with Thanksgiving and all. Had a pretty productive Monday-Tuesday, but if history is any indication things are sure going to slow down over the next six weeks or so.

Comedy

*Didn't do much comedy-wise with Kathy away the early part of the week and the holiday in the latter part of the week. But what I did do was write some jokes, and I have some new material I'm looking forward to trying out at the mics on Monday and Tuesday this week.

*Two (non open mic) shows this week - both in New Hampshire. Tonight is Union Coffee House in Milford and Thursday is in Nashua. More info in the 'Comedy Shows' link above, which I think is updated with all of the rest of the shows I'll be doing in 2017.

What I've Been Enjoying

*I might have spoiled this a little bit if you saw it on the Facebook page earlier this week, but I just love this video from the Weather Channel camera set up to capture the implosion of the Georgia Dome on Monday in Atlanta. It's kind of crazy that the Georgia Dome was built and torn down all in my lifetime. Almost makes me feel old. But I think this one's more of a reflection of the goings-on of the city of Atlanta than it is of my age.

*Also, it allowed me to make this joke, which is less than a week old and has already become outdated (and only makes sense if you watch the video linked above):

That was the second-most hard to watch Atlanta implosion this year, if you count the second half of the Super Bowl.

*If you want to see the podcast recommendation I put up about a series on working moms, that's still on the Facebook page.

Notes

*This is crazy: Kathy was thousands of miles away in Germany and still somehow managed to steal the sheets from me in the middle of the night. Don't believe me? I have no other explanation for you. You explain it.

*I can't remember if I wrote about this when it happened, but a while back there was a sale on butter. When that happens I'll usually buy four boxes, put two in the fridge and two in the freezer for later. Somehow (I must have been shopping distractedly because I'm very conscious of keeping this from happening) I bought unsalted butter. So, after using a couple of sticks on everything (much to the complaining of the children) I only used the unsalted for cooking. (Applied liberally so as to speed up the process of using up the butter.) I am pleased to report, though, that this weekend we finally finished up the unsalted butter. Glad that ordeal's over.

*Like many other Thanksgiving Saturdays I went out to do the last raking before the final town collection (literally the final TOWN collection. The next time they collect the leaves, in the spring, it will be a city collection) of the year and I decided to put up one Christmas decoration, then another, and then I figured I might as well just put the lights up. So the halls are decked, as they say. I feel good about it, because if I didn't do it now I don't know when I would have the time - things are so busy between now and Christmas.

*One more word on the leaf collection - I always wish they went deeper into December. Right now my property is pretty cleared of leaves, but there's a giant tree that looms above our yard from the neighbor's house that never loses its leaves until mid-December at the earliest. So I'm going to be picking up more leaves but have nowhere to put them until the spring.

*One last thing about Thanksgiving: Every year we're in Massachusetts for the holiday I remember to go sign up for the town's Turkey Trot in what I think is a reasonable amount of time and it's always sold out. So I've never done this 5K. Someday I'd like to but it is certainly a popular ticket. The only Thanksgiving Day 5K I've done is a Somerville one that's a 4-miler back when I was teaching in Belmont. It was a great way to start Thanksgiving. I'd like to do it again.

*Hope you had as great a Thanksgiving weekend as I did.