DB's Thanksgiving Break so far ...

Worked a regular day on Wednesday before Thanksgiving (at least traffic was light).


I finished roasting my 20lb Turkey Wednesday night (think this was my 10th solo or assisted bird). It took a little longer (probably 'cause I stuffed it).

In between checking on my roasting bird and making a non-thanksgiving related dinner; I was tranferring some video footage to DVD and catching up on some of my DVR'd episodes.

Thursday (Thanksgiving aka "Turkey Day") was sort of a crazy day :

I think I overcommitted again. Partially since I was up till 12am cooking and putting away my turkey, I overslept the next day. I showed up late at the church thing (appointment #1 / food prep for our host church's Thanksgiving outreach dinner). When I arrived about 1/2 an hour late, the kitchen was full of people! About a third of them were from my church, Epic. There was literally too many cooks in the kitchen and not enough work. I managed to help put out the cranberry sauce on some of the tables before taking off (a total 15 minutes of volunteer work). OH WELL ... I used my extra time to go gas up my car, pick up an Orange County Register (newspaper) and wash my dirty car at home. I made it to appointment #2 (Aunt & Uncle's) for lunch. It was good, I saw nearly all of my relatives including my bro and his family. I got to play catch with my 4 yr old nephew, Trevor. It was a good (sweaty) workout for me. We took a combined family photo (including my Aunt's side of the family the Chinese-Filipino half). It's always nice to see everyone!


From Montebello (San Gabriel Valley), I drove down to Huntington Beach (appointment #3) to see the my old church friends (my adopted "Ju" family, our inside joke since we have the same last names). Oh Boy, MORE FOOD (ugh)! At least I was pacing myself (remember I still have a 20lb bird in the fridge at home). It was really good to see my friends, because everyone is married (some with kids) and we all go to different churchs now.

By this time, it was actually feeling like winter time in LA ... brrrrr (and I was wearing tee shirt and shorts since this morning). I was starting to get hoarse from all my catching up with folks and the colder weather. Okay, just one more stop (appointment #4) ... heading back to North OC and finding out where Clarence and his roomies live (they were relatively close to my pad in Bpk). They were serving up DEEP FRIED TURKEY ... I sampled a piece, it was pretty tasty! Probably the best I had all day.

There were a whole lot of folks at Clarence's (mostly folks from Edwin's alumni - University of Illinois). I only knew Clarence, Edwin, Peter, Becky and Candace but everyone else seemed nice. The guys had this huge HD TV in their living room! Very impressive. I didn't know that Edwin and others were such big "Grey's Anatomy" Fans; we saw the special episode with extended ending with all the oooohs and aaaaaws (yup, the extra commentaries were flyings). I guess I can't call GA a chick flick anymore since there were so many fans that room happened to be guys! It was a good episode.

Well, after GA and after my helping of dessert I went home. I was WIPED ... it was such a long day! I drove about 88 miles in a wide circle. I caught the special RBD (the singing group from the Mexican Soap Opera, "Rebelde") concert that I recorded with my DVR. I was pretty much set on not being caught up with doing "Black Friday" this year until I saw the Walmart ad with the special RBD CD and Season One of "Rebelde" DVD being release on Friday! YUP! I was going to get up early on Friday.

Okay, Friday rolled around and I mis-set my alarm clock and didn't make it to Walmart at 5am but I did get there at 6:30am and you know what?! The parking lot wasn't that full at the local Walmart and alot of folks were already heading home or to other stores. It was weird seeing so many folks walking away from the store with TV sets and computer boxes in their arms (sort reminded me of the looting in LA years ago). Anyway, I got directed to enter thru the garden center since the management wanted to keep the front entrance free for folks leaving the store. After an intense 15 minutes of dodging crazed Walmart shoppers in the early morning hour I finally found what I was looking for ... my CD/DVD Rebelde special! Being a photo blog idiot, I whipped out my mini digital camera to shoot a snapshot of the display and promptly dropped my camera on the tiled floors sending the expensive rechargeable batteries flying all over the place! I finally found them under some pallet display. Ugh, need coffee!

Oh, Walmart is very clever ... I got sucked in because I wanted the "Rebelde" DVD; I ended up with a new portable DVD player ($49) , a DVD player case ($10) , and few more CD/DVD packages (for about $10 each)! Yup, Walmart got my holiday dollars!

I went straight home ... no more shopping for me. I still have to buy my plane tickets for home back to Mississippi during the Christmas break. Anyway, after checking out my new stuff and listening to my new CD's and watching some episodes of "Rebelde" Season 1 ... I had a quick breakfast and took a nap. Afterward I had to meet a friend at a local golf course for some twilight golfing.

The golf course (La Mirada GC) was very busy! We had to wait about an hour on so before we got assigned a tee time and position. After the intial confusion (all these Korean players kept trying to join us in the line up) but we ended up with two college guys (who were pretty inexperience too). Actually, they were pretty nice guys (compared to the jerk we got last time my friend and I golfed). It was a long slow day on the course. Eventhough, I come here for my weekly private lessons I've never played the course before. It's a loooong course! My driver tee shots were pretty bad for most the first 9 holes. I did managed to hit a nice long drive with my Taylor Made on the 10th. I put back into my golf bag, my hybrid #5 club after my Tucson trip last week and I actually hit really well with it. Anyway, it got really dark by 5:00 and all of my golfing partners retired except me. I hit one last tee shot from the 12th and spent the next 20 minutes looking for my nice neon color ball.

So here I am, having dinner and OD'ing "RBD" CD and videos.

Tomorrow, one of my coworker friends is having a photo sitting for the holidays. I have to grab some nice dress shirts for the shot (hopefully I won't blend into the RED scenery).

-DB-