Okay, the subject is misleading. I didn’t actually create a Gantt chart in order to make the Feast happen today. But Sandra and I came pretty close.

A few days ago we asked ourselves what we wanted to eat, and answered the question in writing with lots of detail. Right down to the candied walnuts, the fudge, and the little trimmings. Then we looked at which of those items could be (or HAD to be) prepared in advance of The Big Day, and put together a schedule.

Then we looked at our counter-depth fridge (counter-depth = less room inside) and came up with a plan for eating what was already there, so there’d be room for pies, martinelli’s, and other advance purchase or advance preparation items.

Cut to the chase…

Today’s schedule was TIGHT. Between 8:00am and 9:00am we had to cook breakfast (Raisin-bread french toast with bacon). At 9:00am we had to get going on the turkey, which meant prepping and stuffing the bird, loading it into the roasting pan, and starting the nigh-on-four-hours timer. By the time we finished that, there was a load of dishes to be run, and the bread machine had to be loaded up and set on “bread dough” mode so we could have dinner rolls. From there I prepped the mashed potatos, the whipped cream (two kinds: plain sweet, and cinnamon), and the sweet potatos.

That took until roughly 11:30. I got a break then. Nice. Just in time to unload and reload the dishwasher.

By the time the bird came out of the oven, there were loads of little, order-dependent things that had to be done. The extra stuffing and the sweet potatos had to go into the oven. The bread dough had to be laid out like dinner rolls. The lettuce needed to be rendered into a salad. The mashed potatos needed to be reheated… all this while a 10 pound turkey carcass was dominating the counter. THAT had to be plattered and covered, and then the drippings turned into gravy.

Right about the time the gravy was done the rolls went into the oven. The rolls were the last thing to cook, and when they came back OUT of the oven the spread looked pretty impressive.

In order to make room for it, I was already doing dishes. Sandra had to retake the picture I haven’t posted yet because I was standing on a counter in the background putting the turkey roasting pan back on top of the cupboards where it can languish for another year or so.

Looking back on the whole operation it was loads of fun. It may have been tightly scheduled, but it really wasn’t all that HECTIC, because we knew what needed to start when. There was no guesswork, there were no holes through which one meal item or another could fall through (unless you count the gap in the middle of the makeshift table for the kids through which Sandra cleverly poured Gleek’s glass of Tang).

Then we ate.

Then I got right on the leftovers project, and started loading up the fridge again. Our planning paid off nicely. Not only did everything fit, there’s room for us to put in some more milk when we run out during the middle of the day on Friday.

I like Thanksgiving. The food is great, having family around is wonderful, and there’s this massively complicated PROJECT I can bring my mad cooxxorz skillz to bear on.

–Howard

I’m glad I’ve been able to spend the last two months cartooning. I’m thankful that I’ve been able to spend so much more of that time with my family. I’m grateful for that family — for all their quirks and quibbles, noise and noisomeness, and especially their affection. I’ve had more family time in the last sixty days than I had in the preceding sixty weeks (and we’ve given the last sixty MONTHS a good run), and it’s been the best sixty days I can remember.

I’m thankful for my faith, and for the strength it gives me in times of trial. I’m even kinda-sorta thankful for trial, because as I look back at the assorted flavors of crap I’ve endured (yes, “flavors” is the right word) I understand that enduring has shaped me into the person I am today.

I like the person I am today. He’s got his share of issues, but he’s willing to work through them. He may not be the humblest man on the block (talking about himself in the third person… what a pompous, arrogant fool!), but he knows he’s got failings, and he knows he’s got failings he doesn’t know about yet.

I’m thankful for the eternal sacrifice Jesus Christ made, so that even the failings I don’t know about can be overcome. I know not everybody believes in Him the way I do, and I’m thankful that I live in a country where that’s okay.

Here in this spot, on this page, I’m especially thankful for my readers… the ones who follow my comic meanderings daily, and the ones who only tune in every so often to find out who’s dead; the ones who send me money, and the ones who don’t; the ones who made it through that last paragraph about Jesus even though they weren’t sure they liked the way it made them feel, and the ones who didn’t even bother to read any of this. I know you’re all out there, and I’m grateful that you’ve trusted me with a corner of your imaginations.

I’m thankful for a place to say all this. I’ve gotten a lot of email from readers thanking me for the comic over the last four-point-four years. Thank YOU, everybody. You make my day again, and again, and again.

I haven’t read The DaVinci Code yet. I want to, but the last time I was book shopping it was available only in hardback, and there are only a very, very FEW authors on my Hardback List.

That said, a friend (I forget who… Richard?) handed me a water-damaged copy of Angels and Demons, which is Dan Brown’s first Langdon book. It wasn’t bad. It had Illuminati, and Freemasons, and Rome, and hidden secrets, and a dead Pope, and all that. Pretty interesting stuff, and while he clearly takes some license with history, it’s hard to see where history leaves off and Dan Brown begins. The book is very believable.

Well, except for the commercially available scramjet, and some of the ignorance necessary to facilitate “cabbaging” (the act of explaining things to the reader by explaining them to a cabbage-headed character who really SHOULD already know this stuff).

Anyway, I finished it last night… err… this morning at around 2am.

This afternoon I went to see National Treasure, starring Nicholas Cages, Boromir, And Some Other People. It was a lot of fun, and I realized that it’s set squarely in the same genre as DaVinci Code, Angels and Demons, and any number of other titles in which freemasons, the Illuminati, or catacombs feature prominently. Heck, that’s a good part of the hook in the Indiana Jones series, and the same could have been said for Tomb Raider if it weren’t for the fact that Angelina Jolie is much more attractive than the stupid plots of either of her game-franchise films.

So National Treasure was fun. It wasn’t especially cranial fun, but it was fun, and that’s what I go to the movies for. If I want intellectual stimulation, I’ll read a book. If I want a cathartic, cry-baby experience, I’ll surf livejournal.com. 😉 Mostly what I want right NOW, though, is a copy of The DaVinci Code. The goofy-fun movie I saw has me hungry for something in the same vein, only with more thinking and less Annoying Blond Actress Whose Accent I’m Not Believing.

–Howard

The current Schlock Mercenary story elements that revolve around “breaking bad news” are a direct outgrowth of my own experience with this. In October of 1986 my father called me while I was at college to tell me my mother had been killed in a car accident. In August of 1988 my grandmother called me while I was working as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to tell me that my father had died from a heart attack.

I’ve ruminated a lot since then about how bad news is best broken. I chuckle about it. I sniffle about it. I write speculative fiction in which people do exactly the right, or exactly the wrong things, at least within the fictionalized constraints of the Universe I’ve conjured up for your entertainment. I’ve wondered how I would handle things if I needed to break bad news to someone, and suspect I’d do badly.

This evening my brother Bill called me to tell me that my grandmother passed away today. It was sudden, but not exactly unexpected. Yes, this is the magnificent lady I went to visit this summer, and whose life (I’m told by those in whose care she’s been) I saved by showing up and dragging Bill and Randy (randytayler) along with me. She’d been on the edge this fall, her hearing went out completely, and she was hospitalized recently in an effort to restore it. It worked, but they discovered she was dehydrated, so they kept her for observation, and that meant they got to observe her final minutes today. Apparently they were quiet ones.

Two things emerge from this tale:

1. I’m really, really glad I saw her this summer. She got well enough to fly out to visit us in August, and got to sleep through one of my Sunday School lessons. She was well enough, barely, to see all the grandkids in the flesh one last time. For this I’m very, very thankful.
2. There’s a pattern here I don’t like. Dad told me Mom died. Grandma told me Dad died. Bill told me Grandma died… I think this means that Bill is next.

Bill, if you’re reading this, you can break the curse! The Red Sox won, and Bush beat the Redskins’ prediction, and those were both THIS YEAR! Just don’t go doing anything dumb, like running red lights or eating that poisonous fish they serve in Japan. Don’t go to Japan! For that matter, don’t even get on an airplane!

–Howard
p.s. If you’re an immediate member of the Tayler family, and you are finding out about Grandma Vernon’s death via my Live Journal, it’s Bill’s fault. He TRIED to reach you, but only got your answering machine. He figured “Hey, you know that ‘beeeeeep’ noise your answering machine makes? Grandma did that today, only longer” was not an appropriate use of the technology. Smart kid, that Billy. Pity about the Japanese fish, though.