The Horizon is a Beltway That We May Never Cross

I'm figuring out more and more that I'm far better at running away from things than running towards them, both mentally and physically - and more often than not, both simultaneously. I do that alot, when I'm angry or upset (which is actually fairly rare); try to push myself to my physical limits.

Jogging the 5k to a friends flat out of anticipation and excitement (and the fact that I prefer running to walking) towards something that could be pretty fantastic, took it out of me slightly. I had to sit on the stairs outside, mostly because the cheese and fries I ate was disagreeing with me but also partly because I was tired and needed composure.

Running the 5k back home from that flat out of anger and 'I-really-couldn't-give-a-fuck-right-now', away from something that could be pretty fantastic, was easy. I hardly felt it and I went quicker on the way back, forced myself to be faster (did it in 20 mins). Didn't need to stop - didn't even feel the need to stop. Only felt running and running away.

A Scottish Thanksgiving.

In short, Thanksgiving was awesome. Probably one of the best nights I've had here in Scotland and there was only one fire. In long, well I'm getting to that.

First I need to emphasis the importance of pumpkin pie. Seriously, that stuff's delicious. Unfortunately, it's not very popular over here and is nigh impossible to find. This led to my Calgarian friend actually ordering some pumpkin pie filling from the Internet. So, everything was set. Except she forgot about pie crusts and asked me on Sunday to go to a store that I lived nearer before it closed so that we'd have something more than just pumpkin gloop. I didn't get to the store in time but still enjoyed myself wandering around city centre cause that place is so frickin' cool and I finally took some pictures of the city cause up till then I'd had none even though I've been here enough. Luckily Calgary Girl found some pie crusts and my whole excursion was unnecessary.

So, the next day, which was Thanksgiving Monday, I met up with Syracuse Guy and Philly Guy and my Roomie and went over to Calgary Girl's flat. Syracuse and Roomie took a detour with me through the Botanical Gardens and we saw a frickin' enormous bumblebee, like 2-3 times normal bumblebee size, which, Roomie assured me was normal for over here. So yeah, freakishly large bumblebees are pretty common. There was also a super rad looking bridge that we walked under and we went through a sketchy part of town where we saw some people who were probably stealing a couch.

We got to the flat, cut up some veggies that Calgary and her roomies hadn't quite finished yet, put them in pans and then went to Tescos to get some more Cranberry Sauce and whipped cream cause, seriously, pumpkin pie without whipped cream? Just can't happen man.

Then cooking started, which was alot of fun. The turkey had already been in for near two hoursish so that was already going but we got started on the veggies. We decided that it would be best and easiest to just mash the hell out of everything and we had a crapload of veggies to cook; potatoes, yams, turnips, parsnips, green beans, and carrots. We had a bunch of instant stuffing mix too that just got microwaved. There was ~16 people there cause Calgary has 11 roomies so we needed pretty much a shitload of food. Somehow I wound up keeping track of the veggies, cause I guess I knew how to cook stuff sortof. So I was going back and forth between 7 different pots all cooking at once (and there was about 3 or 4 still waiting to go on) making sure everything was cooking all good and not boiling over.

When stuff started being done I handed it off to Syracuse, Philly and Roomie to do the mashing till we'd gone through everything and had it all done. Then, I decided it'd be best to get my backpack out of the kitchen cause it was filling up with people so I went with Calgary to put it in her room. We were gone literally 10 seconds and a fire burst out. One of the flatmates, who is vegetarian, was cooking veggie chicken in the other oven and the grease (which, how does that work?) caught on fire. Luckily, the fire alarm in the kitchen didn't work and they put it out with a fire blanket.

Oh, best part now. I carved the shit out of the turkey. So basically I just won Thanksgiving 2009. Please send all accolades, cash prizes and meal stamps to my address. Anyways, the food itself was fantastic. It was all pretty tasty, specially the mashed and sweet potatoes but the turkey was super good, even though we didn't have much turkey to go 'round. The pumpkin pie was amazing too. Most of the Scots there hadn't tried it before so it was all new and excited and us North Americans were all pumped about it.

Clean up went pretty quick too with five or so of us working on it and I ditched out halfway through cause my parents phoned which was really nice cause screw cleanup man. By the time I'd got back they were done cleaning and Philly had gone back to his flat cause he had stuff to do so me, Syracuse, and Roomie all just hung out in Calgary's room for awhile, taking turns at guitar which was frickin' awesome and also the first time I'd spent a decent amount of time with my Roomie so it was good. We also discovered a return flight on Ryanair to Oslo for a grand total of 2 pence. It's during exam time though so I don't think we can go which is a drag.

And that was my Scottish Thanksgiving, yay!