Danksagung!

Thanksgiving.

I woke up with a scrambled brain(not the usual weekend hangover, just a wine reminiscence.  I drank some coffee and took Cinder on a quick one mile jog on the beach just to be fun, and then took her on an additional walk.  Needless to say, she’s still tired.

On the walk, I managed to find one of the weekly newspapers(Folio weekly here) and read much of it at the dog park at the apartments while Cinder was doing her own thing.  I read that Pete’s bar was having their Thanksgiving party(in which I had been instructed to go to by many before) today, so being it both a bar & a party, I felt I must attend.

I baked all of my goods for my holiday the day before, and did prep work for dinner in the morning.  Beyond that, It’s only Cinder and me here.  My partner is in Ohio with family.  Therefore, my margin of error when it comes to anything is minimized.

So off I went to Pete’s bar for their annual Thanksgiving party.  I didn’t expect it to be any more than the bar being full.

Not.  Quite.

It was really cool walking up to this, being it about a couple thousand people drinking on the street in stupid hats that reminded me of turkeys defecating on people’s heads and other fun outfits reminding others of anything but the Native American massacre or the National Day of Mourning.  Here are a couple guys now!!

It was quite a windy day out and it made the palm trees along the street come alive with a weird enthusiasm that made the party all the more fun.

I found a good vantage point for a couple of pictures and a tiny drunk girl yelled “PBR!!” at me to get my attention.  She screamed “Happy Thanksgiving” and I replied with a simple “Cheers, you too!”  It wasn’t until I flashed my wedding band that she lost interest and started making fun of me to her friends.  The entirety of this happened in the allotment of five seconds.

Now, mind, it is not some cruel delusion that I have of being better looking than most people when I say that I sometimes have to flash my wedding band to people.  I’m by no means a gorgeous guy, but I do reserve the awesome right to walk around like I have a handle on the world while ostensibly not caring about it either.  Maybe that is where I get all of the looks.  Maybe I’m on a perpetual LSD trip as a result of a bit too much when I was younger.

Either way, the look that people give when I have to make the wedding band flash apparent is typically priceless because we have made a mental connection.

See the tangents I get into when left unchecked?!

Oh well, great time over all, perhaps a few thousand people by 1…

I was about halfway through my second beer when my phone pulled a FC.

When I refer to “FC”, that means Force Close.  The thing is, I rooted my phone & throw new software/ROMs into it on a regular basis.  The purpose is to have fun & find cool new geek stuff that I wouldn’t find on a normal phone.  If you have an Iphone, first off-I’m sorry.  Second, it’s considered “jailbreaking” with the iOS.

Back to the story though.

My phone all fucked up, I walked back to the car because I had my OSB(Oh Shit Bag) in my trunk.  OSB’s are quite handy because you never know when you are going to be totally screwed without something as simple as a box cutter or water purification tablets.  That isn’t me being paranoid, that is me being prepared(anyone reading this an Eagle Scout????  Neither am I.).  Inside the bag was my regular camera.  I like regular cameras.

On my way back to my car, a very drunk girl made a very bad decision on her bicycle & ended up falling over sideways.  Face to concrete style.  Her friend & I were the only ones immediately around.  She was on the ground ten feet in front of me, I asked if she needed any help, to which she gave a very bitter “NO!  I’m fine!!”

I have to stop offering help to people.  I often forget that young people now are constantly scared of their surroundings.  This usually ends up making a situation that could be innocent & helpful become one that is a blown-out-of-proportion accusation.  The drunk girl was not at all good looking unless her sunglasses were hiding topaz eyes, and her general complexion made her seem as though she should spend less money on greasy food.  Not my call though, and thankfully so, because she and her friend started bellowing for a Jason as I walked away.  I’m pretty happy that I didn’t have to return to that mess.

Once I got back into the party with the camera, I bought a beer next to some prick pointing out that some girl was a bit too over her limit inside Pete’s, and she was leaning against the door, making her torso somewhat more prominent than most other things sticking out of the door.

I walked away, only to run into a group of dressed up drunk people, the wife questioning her husband as to whether she could drive or not.  He dismissed her, mainly because her speech was impeded so much it was almost as if she was speaking another language(and butchering even that one).

After that, a couple of ladies were finding each other by playing Marco Polo.  That has got to be the best way to find your friends at such an event.  I commended the one lady and told her that I was stealing that particular idea.

Other cool pictures that I took:

People were selling Bloody Marys from a truck.

This shall be my partner & my ideal cars(come on, they’re cute together!!)

I want one more than almost anything. The bike, not the thing pooping on it.

I am filming a hippie that is filming stuff. Damn I’m sad.

people, if you could please refrain from wearing shit like this, it would make you look a lot less worse than how you do already.

LOTS of people.

That is a fun hat.

If you don’t see an irony here, don’t ever talk to me.

the ground was trashed.

I spoke with the bartenders briefly & they were having a blast.

MOBILE ATM???!!!

Had to thank the security team on the way out, they weren’t buzzed or having fun at all it seemed.

A quick sketch at Poe’s after the party. Another person I had to do the wedding band flash to.

dangerous waves today….

I went to Poe’s Tavern after the festival & chatted with Anthony for a bit.  Some of his friends came up & we all had a decent time just drinking and having a grand time.  I got out of there after a couple hours & decided it was time to make dinner, after all, I had a hungry child at home…….

aaaaaaaaannnd Cinder is hungry.

I made up the Tofurkey & the jalapeno poppers right away & worked on the pita stuffing last.

Vegan Jalapeno poppers & ranch:)

Tofurkey & pita stuffing

Lunch tomorrow.

Both Cinder and I got full within a few minutes(we were eating things while we were cooking…ok, I cooked while she was looking at me with those sad, hungry eyes eating what I dropped or gave her.  It’s a pretty good symbiotic relationship we have), so I/we have some easy leftovers for the weekend.

Mind you, I love going places alone.  It lets me draw odd thoughts and stories that make fun of a lot of boring situations.  That, by no means, means I am more happy that way.  I’ve had quite an irregular holiday work schedule for the past seventeen years.  Meaning, I rarely got holidays off, if at all.  Shit, when my partner and I first got married, I worked almost all of the holidays while my boss took the day off to go out of town or whatever else he did.

Before that, holidays were sporadic.

When I worked at the bars, I worked holidays, but they were fun.

But that was before I found someone.

Unfortunately for you, when that someone is away, you get to read my fun times.  No need to thank me just yet.

I’d love to make the assumption that I make a great point in every one of my posts.  Maybe a great life lesson, perhaps something to inspire another person.

Because I’ve made a hell of a lot of mistakes, but they aren’t mistakes.

They are learning opportunities.

I might not have learned fast in my youth, but who does except for the boring populace?

Teachers would call them brilliant, phenoms, even idiot savants(that was a one time thing, but still entertaining nonetheless).

I hadn’t the time to concern myself with school.  I worried about older, bigger assholes making my world shitty because I had better vocabulary than them in third grade.  I worried for years until I realized I didn’t care.

I didn’t care.

Those were the years that I would run around the school, getting my two foot long wallet chain confiscated by Dr. Smith, the principal, because it was considered a potential weapon.  If you knew me at that point, I would love for someone to come out & say how non-confrontational I was at that point, and thus the factor of me using it as a weapon is negated.

All I wanted to do was get by the principal with all of my apparel intact, learn some art technique, and have some easy time in Home Economics class.

In retrospect, I didn’t learn much until I got out of school.  Most of my scholarly achievements involved Biology or English.

It took some time, but I made sure that I could handle my own.

It came to me the other day that I have been out on my own for 15 years.  Initially, it scared the shit out of me, but after a couple weeks I adapted.  I did something that most can’t do(even though they might call bullshit to that & say they could…It’s really easy, just be smart in the right ways), and made it to the point where I have a decent thing going.

Today’s giant lesson is nothing.  Better yet, today’s giant lesson is that you should make your own lessons.

And don’t go shopping tomorrow.  It’s already a well known fact that America’s consumption rate is higher than any other country in the world.  Chalk another great stat up there with the obesity & prison system population.

American Thanksgiving is being abandoned because of corporate big-box stores being greedy.  Hell, at the downright shitty job that I was at before this one, they required us to work any of the holidays, and sometimes all of them.

Considering so many hordes of idiot consumers are bombarding these stores right now only reinforces the idea that if we all work right now, then we will make more money.  Pretty soon, I could see banks working holidays as long as CEO’s are making money.

Fuck these places.

I know the convenience is awesome so you can trample another person to save ten bucks.

Jimmy Damour, for one(a worker that night).

Learn from your mistakes.

Patience has become boring to most.

If I ever died in a stampede acting along with other consumers, deny my existence.

Goddamnit, if you see me in any of these mobs, take me out.  It isn’t fun.  I’d rather blow the extra cash when these other shits are gone.

So shop on Saturday instead.  Shop the local businesses that don’t force their employees to work holidays.  Maybe it will resonate to the big greedy guys that don’t have to visit stores anymore.

Oh well, I’m pretty thankful that I won’t work an0ther holiday.  Unless I work at the bars again.  Then I could enjoy it.