This was the last long weekend before exam crunch time and then winter break! It was Thanksgiving weekend (Thurs-Fri) here in the U.S. I have to say it was my most productive Thanksgiving ever, lol. But before that, I must warn that this blog post is heavily food concentrated.

On Wednesday evening my mom and I went grocery shopping for ingredients. It was crowded but nothing unmanageable – in fact it just felt like a regular day because the lines at the cash registers weren’t much different. But the people everywhere, that is something you only see right before a holiday event and people are gathering their last minute food items. When we were looking through the bakery items to choose one dessert, there were just a ton of pies that were amazing. And I don’t mean just your normal apple pie. There was this one pie that was calling my name. It was something like a 3 layer “Apple Streusel Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake.” I don’t dare ask how many calories would be in that piece of work, although to lessen the sin, the 3 layers were very thin…it’s not like it was a towering 3 layers or anything. It was the size of a normal pie, it just had 3 layers in it instead. HAHA ok wow, that’s enough of talking about a pie that I didn’t buy.

Since I was eyeing that pie, this random man walking by said it was amazing (he had it before). And when I went to look at other desserts, he proceded to say those were pretty good, too. lol! My mom told me later, “You can tell which people like their pies by their stomachs.” I was like shush mom! haha…Asian moms…

Anywayyyys, when I got home I got to workin’ on preparing the food already. Last year was the first year we cooked our own Thanksgiving dinner and I learned that the best trick to do is to prepare everything that you can the night before so that on Turkey Day, all you gotta do is pop those babies in the oven. Cooking everything on Thanksgiving day itself is soooo draining if you’re going to do that.

All the meanwhile, I was working on my stupid 10-15 page (and being me of course I ended up needing the 15) formal lab report that was due on Saturday evening. I tortured myself with writing that thing the entire Thanksgiving weekend, sadly. The good news it, I finished and I still managed to have a little bit of fun.

On Thanksgiving Day, I finished cooking everything, except for the turkey – that was my mom’s task. Turn out this year? Amaaazing. hahah The turkey was the most moist turkey we ever had – normally turkey has a bad connotation because it’s sooo dry tasting. I also made mashed potatoes (from actual potatoes and yummy fattening ingredients, not from powder, lol), caramelized butternut squash, sweet potato casserole, and the most amazing stuffing ever. The stuffing is always the first to go, haha. Oh, and at my brother’s request, we bought a pumpkin pie while grocery shopping (that’s why I was browsing through the pies earlier).

I told him, “Heck no we’re not getting pie this year.” And he was so upset, lol. Little did he know, we did grab him one at the store. After we finished eating our Thanksgiving meal, he busted out the pumpkin pie and cut out a huge piece for himself. I told him, “Ummm, are you sure you can eat all that? I think you cut too much for yourself.” He replied, “Of course I can eat all of this.” 2/3 into his piece of pie, he admits to me, “I think I got too much pie.” Hahaha. Mind you, my brother’s a 30 year old man, not a 5 year old boy. But sometimes it’s like he’s my little brother.

We had our Thanksgiving meal as soon as I finished cooking, which was around afternoon. In the evening, I went to another Thanksgiving party – my boyfriend’s family’s. lol. Surprisingly I didn’t stuff myself with food at either meal. I just ate like I do normally (ok, maybe a little more), but felt really happy with the variety of food I was eating (I love eating little bits of everything). My boyfriend’s family is Filipino and for their Thanksgiving dinner they had Filipino food, buffet style. hahaha, hey, well it was great because I wasn’t sick of turkey & I could go home the next day and still eat my leftovers without being sick of it.

Besides the stupid paper I had to write, I’d like to mention one more buzzkill: my dad! He wasn’t even home till after my family (mom, bro, me) finished our meal. He had gone out to eat with his friend for lunch. Honestly, the way my dad is and how we’ve celebrated any holiday in the past, it’s no big surprise, so this year I didn’t even think twice about it.

This year a lot of stores are trying out this new thing where they open at midnight after Thanksgiving dinner for Black Friday with lots of blowout sales. I know a lot of people are against this kind of thing, but hey man, I went okay? Don’t judge. No, but really. I spent the entire day with family and boyfriend’s family, and at midnight, everyone’s already sleeping, lol. I’m usually just up late in my room by myself. My boyfriend and I didn’t particularly want anything like a big screen TV or anything. I honestly was excited to go because it was the first time I had done that kind of thing AND it was the first time I would get to go out shopping at freaking 1 in the morning!

So it wasn’t that I got tons and tons of sales that night, but it was super fun walking around and feeling like there was actual night life, like I was in New York or something! Stores here close at 9 or 10pm at the latest. Sometimes they close as early as 6pm. If you don’t already know, I am a night owl, and I love night life. So just participating in something that happened at night was exciting to me. I really don’t recommend going sale shopping during Thanksgiving weekend unless you’re in it for fun, or you know exactly what you’re buying because you saw the price in an advertisement. Otherwise, you might be sorely disappointed by the insane crowds of people and lack of sales (or just sold out sales because people got them all before you).

Traffic was pretty bad, but we were smart about it, and parked somewhere people didn’t really think of parking at and then walked everywhere. There were even protesters (it was only about 10 college-looking kids marching around) yelling something about consumerism. Which I was surprised to see, but that actually looked kind of fun, too. LOL.

I honestly don’t have anything against people wanting to buy a big screen TV for 200 bucks if they have to get in line overnight for it. Some people do it for the fun, some people don’t even celebrate Thanksgiving, and for some people it’s the only chance they will ever have to buy something nice because otherwise they don’t have enough money to do it.

So anyways, to sum up my sale harvests, I ended up getting two (sort of more practical) things that I really wanted. And ironically, I didn’t get them until Saturday after I finished my paper. I got a 6.5 ft pre-lit Christmas tree for half off and a bed set (comforter, sheets, etc) for half off. See? Somewhat practical. The tree is a little sparse-looking but for the amazing price I think it will look more spruced up once I decorate it and get it looking more full. Since it’s an unwritten rule that you put up Christmas decorations by the time Thanksgiving ends, I guess I won’t be an exception anymore now that I have a tree, LOL.

See what I mean when I said I had a productive Thanksgiving weekend? Grocery shopping, 15 page paper, prepared a Thanksgiving meal for my family, went to boyfriend’s Thanksgiving dinner, and went shopping. Cyber Monday is tomorrow – but I’m too poor for it, lol. But if you’ve been waiting to buy something, make sure to see if it’s on sale for Cyber Monday!

School has been really rough on me. Sometimes (a lot of the time…) this whole college grading system and financial aid system doesn’t seem fair. At the very least, it doesn’t help me keep my sanity, that’s for sure. In the back of my mind, I remember my family is still going through financial troubles. But going through all this crazy madness kind of makes you forget everything, and you just feel really satisfied. I got to spend some time with my family, with my boyfriend, my boyfriend’s family, got major school work done, ate some really good food (who doesn’t love good food???), and had fun shopping (despite not buying very much). Tomorrow I go back to having classes and exams and assignments, but this Thanksgiving weekend reminds me that if I can just hang in there for two weeks, I can enjoy this kind of craziness again very soon for Christmas.

I’m so glad I have my beloved blog to just dump out all of these thoughts and memories. And the very nice people who stop by now and then to give me comments that I love reading. Doesn’t get any better than this right now.