Thanks Be To Good Times

Thanksgiving was a tremendous success this year. The preparation and cooking lasted several days as usual, but for the first time we had so much fun the festivities lasted into the night, the next day, and the next night too, almost until midnight: a thirty hour Thanksgiving!

The menu included:
Perfect Turkey
Gravy made from Awesome Turkey Giblet Stock
Sausage Stuffing
Awesome Sausage, Apple and Cranberry Stuffing
Sweet Potato Casserole I
Stir Fried Broccoli
Cheese Garlic Biscuits II
Fetaki Mushroom Noodle Casserole*
Roasted Carrots with Whiskey Glaze
Cranberry Sauce
Chutney (Ed's delicious home made chutney)
Wild Mushroom Sauce
Zucchini-Chocolate Chip Muffins
Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake with a Graham Cracker Crust

*One item that had to be scrapped was the Zucchini Alfredo. The zucchini was over ripe and did not tenderize while cooking. Thank God I tasted it before pouring it over the fantastic noodles that special lady brought me back from Italy. I redid the sauce as a fetaki mushroom sauce.

And the morning after I made beer bread with the left overs.

Aidas won the food eating competition as usual, but may have overeaten. He and Kristina had to leave more than 24 hours earlier than the others without much drinking to blame.

The first evening we hit the sauna, the man cave, and played a beirut tournament. After several rounds of play while Gintaras and I were still in the sauna we decided we needed some breweries to rehydrate. We beat my special lady and Linas, then we beat Ed and Donatas, and no challengers arose: Eglė and Giedrė either pussed or were too drunk. We won! Luckily the games were close enough that we got to quench our thirst anyway. And just in case we didn't, back to the man cave!

Next day we did the sauna again after being party to the shampoo effect. We had a terrific afternoon playing Alias and Cranium, but then made the mistake of playing Žodžių Bokštas (Up-Words). That took forever; towards the end it was high time to say labanaktis! I was really glad they stayed because it's nearly impossible to get a game of Cranium going, it's only the second time I've been able to play it in Lietuva since getting it for Christmas. You need four people with a decent knowledge of American pop culture, and it always seems more appropriate to play something like Beirut during the party proper. The stragglers left on the day after the party turned out to be perfect cranium players.

A good time was had by all!

Flustered? What a bone head.

Yesterday I was a bit flustered after work, apparently. I walked out as usual to Kalvarijų Street. Usually I just flag down a micro bus, but this time I had a bunch of bus tickets burning a hole in my pocket. I began crossing the street to walk to the bus stop, when I immediately noticed a great micro bus: I usually take the five, which runs more often, but when I get a fifteen it's better, it brings me closer to home. So I dashed through the intersection just in the nick of time. Actually I wasn't in the nick of time, the micro had to wait for me during a green light, but I made it. Awesome.

I had no money. Not awesome. I told the driver crap, I don't have any cash, I'll have to get out and go to an ATM. The kind man told me just to sit down this time and forget it. Awesome. As we drive by Kalvarijų Market I reach for my phone. I have to call my special lady to ocme pick me up at the end of the bus route, because the bus doesn't take me all the way home, and it might not be safe to walk home at night. As I did this what do I find but my keys? Oh, yeah, I took the car myself today. Not awesome. I tell the driver to let me out, it seems that I've forgotten something else as well and have to go back.

Here is my walk back. Before I even got the car my wife had already called me to ask why I'm not home yet. I hadn't even left work properly yet.

I had to walk

Article of the Day

What an asshole Obama is! I don't know how he can look himself in the mirror after bowing so low...Why is this man bowing?

Allow me to introduce myself: I'm a mathematician.

Gedas was visiting Vilnius to register the birth of his second child. We went out for beers with Auriukas and Bronius. After a few beers somebody asked, for no reason in particular, "what's the sum of the internal angles of a hexagon?" The question wasn't addressed to anybody in particular but sort of as a rhetorical question, such as "Who is John Galt?" or maybe sort of as a general challenge. Irregardless of the meaning of the question, which was lost somewhere in a number of beers already drunk, I piped in with "720."

Nobody was expecting an answer, at least not one instantly. If the point of the question was a challenge than it was assumed that if would be a difficult challenge requiring four heads to be put together. But that's not how it went down. I just answered it and three surprised faces turned to me and two of them proceeded to call me a fool while the other demonstrated on paper that, in deed, I was right.

As the beer flow continued and the pipe smoking began, a new question was quickly put forth, two questions really: why is it 720º, and what is the formula for the internal angles of a polygon? I couldn't answer either. I just knew! Gedas was especially insistent that the meaning behind the knowledge is more important than the knowledge itself--why oh why is it 720º??? I didn't know how I knew it.

I asked the bartender for some paper. We spent the next 45 minutes or so working out the internal angles of all polygons up to an octagon, trying to work out the formula, and drinking several more beers. By the end of this period, which everybody else in the bar spent chatting about sports and women, or else shopping and men, the rest of my company gave up. I couldn't give up, though, I knew I was so close. Finally five minutes later I got it: 180(n-2) where n is the number of angles, happiest moment of my life excluding love life. Hooray!

Article of the Day

This piece puts such an interesting spin on the whole health care thing that I'll have to put some of it into practice at work: Want to Reform Health Care? Improve the Workplace, by Jeffrey Pfeffer.

Article of the Day

I had an enjoyable little read today with It's Barack Obama's first anniversary - but there's precious little to celebrate, by Simon Heffer. I wonder what the chatter is like now in America. I wonder what people are saying about all the Nothing getting done.