A Two Year Wait for Turkey

Happy Belated Thanksgiving to anyone who celebrates it. I spent the night before Thanksgiving with my family and then got up already smelling the turkey and pies my mother was making. I haven't had a Thanksgiving dinner in two years, so this was just the most incredible scent for me. Turkey isn't a popular bird to eat in Japan, so I don't think I ate it the entire time I was there. God how I missed stuffing and sweet potatoes with melted marshmallows, which if you ask me is the only way to eat sweet potatoes. It was good to finally celebrate a holiday with my family again for the first time in a couple of years. Living in Japan and celebrating the holidays there with friends or alone was an experience I'll never forget, and actually really did love for a different set of reasons, but it's nice to sit with my mom and dad and brothers and sisters in law and their kids and my grandparents and spend the holidays together again. My grandma hadn't seen my beard and mustache yet. She thinks I look like Abraham Lincoln. I laughed a lot, trying to picture myself with Abraham Lincoln's head on my short little body.

Later on I had a second Thanksgiving dinner with friends in Youngstown, and afterwards played board games and made fun of each other for various challenges we had to do while playing Cranium. After that we watched several episodes of "Strangers with Candy" and laughed and laughed. I love Amy Sedaris heaps.

My apartment is already looking very Christmas-y. The tree is up, and various other decorations. I'm so excited for the holidays. I love the lights, the music, the Christmas movies, the decorations all over downtown and in the shopping plazas, the people hurrying around so that they can get all the presents they want to give to others. I think Christmas trees and lights should be permanent, year-round decorations.

I've been working on my third novel the past few months. It's going well, and I'm well into it: around 40,000 words so far. I hope to finish a first draft by the end of May, or if I get busy with other writerly or teacherly duties, then by the end of next August.

Also, I forgot to mention my story "A Thousand Tails" will appear in Firebirds 3, edited by Sharyn November. It's one of the stories I wrote while living in Japan, and shares a character in common with my story "Realer Than You" which will appear in Coyote Road, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, this Summer.

Lots more going on, as usual. School is winding down into the last couple of weeks of the semester. Soon I'll be neck-high in final essays that need to be graded. But I look forward to the Christmas and New Year season afterwards. I may throw a New Year's Party for friends. That, too, I look forward to doing. I can't remember the last time I threw a party. I mean, other than the karaoke parties Alan and Kristin and I throw at Wiscon for everyone.

Lots of fun coming up over the next month or so. I hope everyone has a good holiday season. I know I'm going to do my best to have the most fun possible.