Happy porky day!

'cause Pork is what we had for dinner. Sure, sounds un-American and all, but that's how we Chickens roll. At least that's how we roll this year...

See, it's like this: like most married couples, every year we try to figure out where to spend each big-name holiday. Originally it was Thanksgiving with the in-laws and Christmas with my folks, then we started fudging that a bit, and a couple years we decided we didn't want to deal at all and just holed up at home and pretended we weren't there. Anyhow, this year Christmas is up in the air, but Thanksgiving was at the in-laws in Oregon.

Now, this opens up two cans of worms. Can #1 is titled "traffic". Which, as you likely know, blows goat. Especially on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. So we traditionally drive down on Thanksgiving morning, figuring most people will already be where they're going. Well, apparently other people are figuring out this little trick, 'cause the roads were anything but empty.

That said, things were moving along just fine until we hit Tumwater (or maybe a bit south of there), where we dropped from a nice round 70 mph to about 20. And we kept it in the 10 to 20 range for a good 10 miles or more, which seriously ate in to our schedule. See, we'd planned to be at the in-laws house in time for the kickoff of the Seahawks game, so we could watch them being the sacrificial Thanksgiving Turkeys for the Cowboys. Oh, and we were going to eat lunch there too. Well, we missed kickoff by about 20 minutes, and missed lunch by an hour or so. And if you've ever traveled in a car with two hungry kids and two hungry parents you know what fun THAT can be!

Anyhow, let's get back to the menu. Why no turkey, you ask? That brings us to part 2 of the equation: the brother-in-law. His family are far more holiday-oriented than either mine or Paige's, so they win. Which means they get Thanksgiving. And since we still want to see him, Val and the niece, we just put off our big turkey fest until Friday so everyone can be together. Which also works nicely since he's the guy cooking the thing now that he's got the fancy-pants deep-fat fryer (or is that deep oil? Whatever). So tonight, in lieu of turkey, we had pork. Which was delightful, but not quite the same. Then again, the fried bird tomorrow will no doubt be well worth the wait, and will be a fine reward for braving the Black Friday crowds!