Pineapples and Fish Stix

November 22nd, 2005 a little after 6pm has been marked as the time I was able to officially start my Thanksgiving holiday from Miami University of Ohio as my wonderful ride, Emily, came to pick me up and we started on our fairly long trek home. She picked me up from Peabody Hall on Western College, me with my laptop, backpack, laundry bag, and duffel bag in hand. So, there's no room for my stuff in the trunk of your little silver Jetta, eh? That's ok, I'll just throw it in the back with me. She was also driving another friend of hers. David I want to say his name was. Or was it Matt? Damn, I can't even remember. It's probably neither of those. In any case, they were incredibly nice people and I had a pretty good time driving back...I felt really comfortable which is always a plus. I even dozed off every now and again. I almost felt rude about it, but I hadn't slept the night before, so I guess in a dark car it's somewhat to be expected, right? Somehow, Emily was able to perform miracles and we were at her house in Novi in pretty much exactly four hours from when we left. In Toledo I had told my dad that he should leave the house so he could be there when we got there. Perfect I say, perfect! He arrived less than three minutes before us. Am I good or what? Yeah, just say that I am. That was pretty much the conclusion of that night. I got back to my house a little after 11pm and I just unpacked and did all that kind of jazz around the house.

At this point, my mom had already gone to bed and had locked up the cats in the basement. I decided to take a gander and take a lookesy. I had, afterall, never met our newest member of the family, Izzy his name is, and I hadn't really had all that much exposure to Tiger either, so we had a short little bonding experience. I'm not going to lie...I wasn't immediately taken by Izzy. He smells, the poor cat. He has some kind of stomach worm and it has made him bloated and he farts a lot. Farty Marty he has been affectionately coined. Tiger was, of course, the regal and amazing cat that I had remembered from our brief meeting over the summer. He truly is a great cat and incredibly gorgeous to top it all off. And he can even be quite playful. He doesn't seem to like Izzy very much, which is kinda sad considering that's actually the only reason we had gotten Izzy. Tiger needed some company while everyone was away from the house now that my mom has started working again. He was getting kind of lonely apparently, so my mom bought him a friend. Tigers likes to hiss at Izzy whenever he walks by though. Anyway, this was my tuesday and I then decided going to bed wouldn't be such a bad idea.

Wednesday:...
I'm trying to remember. What happened on Wednesday? Ah, yes. I drove over to my grandparents (from my mom's side) at noon to meet up with them, my mom, and my awesomely awesome uncle from Washington (State, duh) and we had lunch together. It was really nice seeing my uncle and grandparents again...it has been quite a while. And come to think of it, this was actually my first time seeing my mom since I got home as well. Quite the reunion of goodness. Lunch was good and we talked a lot, naturally. About nothing overly exciting that I can remember. It was really nice to be able to drive again too. Man I miss it. And Marvin is so good to me, I hope he doesn't feel sad and lonely. What a great car he is.
After lunch, we drove my grandparents back and kidnapped my Uncle Bob so that he could come back to our place and show us some pics from his trip to the Swiss Alps. He's big on skiing. While my mom was driving him back to our house, I took a small detour to FINALLY get my pics finished from the Dresden Dolls Concert so that I can finish up my poster and stopped at the movie theater in Chesterfield to pick up tickets for RENT. Surprisingly enough, my uncle wanted to come with us. How cool! and surprising. I got back and joined my mom, Uncle Bob, and Tiger in the photo tour of Switzerland. Good times.
I'm not going to lie...I certainly wasn't disappointed with RENT. And surprisingly enough, my uncle loved it. It doesn't seem like his kind of a thing. But that's cool. I don't really want to get to into it, but I'm definitely ok with seeing it again if there's anybody that wants to see it. I think that having the original cast (for the most part) was helpful in keeping the integrity of the show, but it certainly wasn't entirely there, which is slightly disappointing. They "dumbed" it down a little it seems to make it PG-13, the pace seemed a little fast, seeing as there is next to no dialogue in the movie, and some of the characters seemed to have changed a little bit. I've never seen the stage version, so I guess I really don't have all that much right to be critical in comparing them, but just from what I know and being very familiar with the music, it seems like the characters have changed a little bit. Mimi seems to have gained a lot more importance to the movie and Angel seemed to have lost quite a bit of importance. He really is kind of like the glue that held the whole group together and who really taught everyone what Love really was, and that wasn't really conveyed in the movie I thought. But yes, it was an excellent movie and I would be ok with seeing it again.
After getting back from the movie, I hung out with Meghan and it was more than loverly being able to finally see her. We had some good times with the Food Network, Scrabble, and a run to Caribou and Target. Good times, good times. I suggest not leaving your keys in your car haha. Going to Target made me not be able to wait until I have a place I can spend money on and get cool random decorations and stuff. That's kind of sad now that I think about it. Why does stuff have to cost money? We should enter the barter system with leaves and grass or something. And I had a new drink for me at Caribou...Turtle something or other. It was muy delicious. I even got a Bavarian Cream pastry thing with it. Man that was good. I heart Caribou and feel that they should be more abundant in Ohio. It was a good day.

Thursday:
Obviously, the day of giving thanks. As per tradition (and I'm a big fan of tradition) I woke up at nine to scuttle downstairs in my PJ's, robe and slippers to plop in front of the tv for a little rendition of "America's Thanksgiving Parade" in good ol' Detroit, Michigan on local NBC. Good times indeed. Actually, maybe not so much. The parade wasn't all that exciting this year. Really, quite atrocious to be honest. It was boring, there were a lot of commercials, and nothing cool happened. There's usually some celebrities and such, this year we had Ryan Cabrerra. WTF? All he did was complain about the cold. So go back to LA you twit. The Briefcase Men, obviously pretty much the coolest act at the Detroit Parade every year, became sell-outs this year. Instead of briefcases, they were using "White Castle Crave Cases." Are you frickin' kidding me? This was probably one of the saddest and most disturbing things I've seen in a long time. What is going on? Sometimes, I really hate America and just the human race in general. Why does everyone have to be such a sell-out and be so concerned with money and whatnot? Do the right thing once in a while. Be true to yourself and what you stand for. Why is that so hard to ask?That's pretty much when the whole traditional thing stopped this year. I'm a big fan of doing things according to tradition and whatnot and having some intimate time with family but that's not really what happened this year for various reasons.

After the parade we went over to my brothers ridiculously nice apartment to watch the football game. This was a joke on its own. If anybody else watched the Lions game, I feel the need to apologize. Seriously, WTF? I mean, I know we're bad, but I think they just added a whole new level to the meaning of the word. Although, it was entertaining in its own right in that the Lions were great at just randomly falling down for no apparent reason. Like, the Falcons would catch the ball, and as they were running there was nobody to tackle them because all of the Lions were just sprawled all over the ground. WTF indeed. Oh well, we have the Red Wings and Pistons, so I can be happy with that. The Lions were really quite pathetic though and it made me more than a little sad. And they were just pretty boring to watch on top of it all. They could have at least lost in some kind of style. I decided to derive my entertainment from my brothers cat, Bosco, who really is quite the entertaining cat. He enjoys climbing up your chest and just staring at you in the face. He also gets great pleasure from milk rings. Good times. He was swell at entertaining himself...and me.
After my brothers we went to my grandparents where we met up with them, my uncle from Washington, and then my other uncle and his family who live in Wisconsin. Because nobody was willing to cook for all of these people, we went to Filipa's for dinner which is rather unfortunate, but the food was amazingly delicious, so I suppose it wasn't all that bad. I had this pineapple glazed ham thing with French Onion soup and scalloped potatoes. Quite delicious indeed. I don't normally like potatoes, but apparently of the scalloped variety I quite enjoy. Good to know. Because it was my grandma's birthday the following day, we had a little celebration with that at the restaurant. The manager had actually gone out and bought a cake for us to bring out to my grandma once the meal was over with. It was quite delicious and rather lemony. I enjoyed it. After this celebration we went back to my grandparents for some of her DELICIOUS homemade desserts. Man is she a good cook. I miss her food over at school. But yeah...pies and cakes galore. Woot woot!

Friday was a day filled with yet more family goodness. I went to my grandparents on my dad's side where we met up with my Uncle Mark, Aunt Diane, and my cousin Amber who I hardly ever get to see. We're getting so old. She's all grown up and will be student teaching after this semester is done with and will hence graduate in the spring. Ridiculous. It was cool seeing them again, it really is far too long between seeing them, I really enjoy their company. My grandma made her delicious White Spaghetti. It's truly orgasmic. The day was filled with good conversation and yummy food. Can't ask for much more. After this I went and saw the new Harry Potter with my mom. I must say, I think this was the best Harry Potter movie yet. I really liked the direction of it, some of the transitions were really cool and I just think that overall it was pretty cool. I was surprised that John Williams was no longer doing the music for it, that seems kinda weird. Maybe he couldn't be dark enough or something. Or was just sick to death of doing it. That could make sense as well. After this went to my other grandparents again for some more homemade desserts and family visiting time.

Since then, I really haven't done a whole lot. I had a six hour phone conversation lol. That has definitely never happened in my life. The phone usually gets to me way before that. I walked around a little bit outside. Bought some wintery "pajazma" pants. That's exciting.

I must say though, that I am really starting to fall in love with my new cats. Tiger is of course gorgeous and intelligent and everything you could hope for. Izzy...is really quite lovable. Yes, he smells. Yes, he could never make it as a show cat. But he's endearing. His eyes are too close together, his head is way too small for his body, his tail is absurdly long, and his hind legs are much longer than his front legs, so he always looks like he's walking downhill. Poor cat lol. He's mostly black and has two white toes and some random white sploches across his belly. Silly kitty. He certainly still acts like a kitten, but he's not really kitten sized anymore. He's intrigued by everything and always wants to play. He's especially obsessed with anything that has any kind of resemblace to string. I wonder why that is. He also has a bad habit of jumping from our upstairs railing onto the stairs below. Without you actually seeing this, I can only say that it is incredibly not safe nor a very koscher thing to do. Silly Izzy.

This has been way too long and has taken me way too long to write. I leave tomorrow in the afternoon to head back to school for what will hopefully be an enjoyable rest of the semester. How come things can't ever just be perfect for a while? There's always the massive downside to everything and that can be kind of annoying. Oh well. This has been a great break, very relaxing, filled with food goodness, and will hopefully give me something to be hopeful and happy about in the near future. I'm not going to lie, I'm starting to lose patience.

Peace and Pillows,
Brandon Michael

PS Sorry for the long breaks between updates...it saddens me much more than you, don't worry. Maybe this will change soon. I can only hope.

Listening to: Misc. songs by The Decemberists