Let's see if I can work something interesting out of, "Well, I'm working a bit this week, and I'm running on the treadmill a bit, and I've bought some CDs." Somehow I doubt it.

Certainly not something as whimsical and beautiful as this. Ahhh, the good old days. (Start at the part that starts "I just found out...".)

- - - - - - - -

Well, I can talk about Thanksgiving. A lot of things about Thanksgiving kind of suck - lots of driving, and I guess that's it - but there are a lot of good things, of course. This year, my mom made homemade cranberry sauce, and that was awesome. This year, the family (well, me and The Boy and our parents) saw Borat, so that was pretty awesome.

This year, the incredibly still-in-existence tradition of cutting down the Rud family Christmas tree in rural Illinois happened again, on Thanksgiving morning.

There were two highlights to this, one higher than the other:

1) The Boy and I took turns heaving the Christmas tree farm's saw at the ground, and having it stick in the ground. We did this about three times each, so that was worth a bit of entertainment.

2) The better highlight: The Boy and I got to tearing pine cones off of trees and flinging them at each other, and hard. Hiding behind Christmas trees, then a turn-and-fire. We probably winged about five or six, hitting legs and thighs and things like that, and it was pretty fun. Tiny welts, but pretty fun. Then, it got really fun. We were hidden behind adjacent trees. He spun towards the middle of the two, but I spun the other way, allowing for me to move towards my throwing arm. Now, about five feet from him, I leaped, I heaved, and - whack! - in the eye. It started welling up, and I declared victory.

I think it was our first Christmas tree-cutting injury in about a decade, and a pretty good one.

- - - - - - - -

I caught up with a few of my remaining high school friends on Friday night. Pretty uneventful. We don't really stay in contact, and I'm not in that fantasy football league anymore, so there's not much of anything to talk about. The main topic was an upcoming spring wedding.

Things learned about this wedding:
1) It's a Sunday wedding. (I knew that. Kind of sucks. Travel and all.)
2) It's a Sunday daytime wedding. (Sucks. But not as much, I guess, owing to the travel.)
3) It's a Sunday, 11 a.m. wedding. (11 a.m.!?!)

Sunday wedding = no booze, right? Wrong! Sunday wedding, in this case, = no free booze.

As my pal Wej said on Sunday night, "There might be seven or eight people whose weddings I'd go to if I knew it wasn't an open bar."

I guess I can't say the same. Hmmm. Yes, I'll be there.

(I'm not entirely sure, but I think my brother's wedding was beer/wine-open all night long, and liquor-open for a few hours. That's perfectly acceptable. And yes, I understand that it's easy to spend someone else's money. But, let's be honest, you only plan to get married once...shouldn't you spring for a kickin' party? Hell yes you should.)

- - - - - - - - - - -

Another thing that's great about Thanksgiving is that my mom's far too nice and I have absolutely no pride. What this means: Another carful of groceries.

I'd been eating a lot of oatmeal for breakfast over the past three or four weeks. Oatmeal, with some applesauce, and some cinammon, and some raisins, and it's a fantastic start to the day. Well, anyway, I probably won't be eating oatmeal for a few months, because my mom saw fit to send me back to The Ring Fingernail with eight boxes of cereal. Eight! Incredible.

And enough to last me until Christmas...

Also, two gigantic freezer bags of turkey, and two more of ham. About seven pounds of raisins, some "healthy" sweets that I devour by the box, a 24-pack of microwave popcorn, some beer, some Surge (ha!), clementines, a big bin of grapes, some of these fantastic Costco mini-peppers, a dozen apples, some mangoes and, oddly, a new pair of jeans. Sweet.

- - - - - - - - - -

Let's do some thinking "out loud" here (no shift in previous tendencies, of course):

I just saw The Boy, who's one of the greatest kids in the world, over the weekend.
However, I only saw him Thursday and part of Friday (during which I was napping).
This week and next, The Boy is two hours south of me, "working." Actually, from the office, he's about 2 1/2 hours south of me.
I'm about 99 percent sure that he'll be allowed to buy me an expensive dinner.
I'm not sure he'll be able to swing me free gas for the drive down and back.
I'll be seeing him over Christmas, though I'll be in the 'burbs Saturday, Sunday, and Monday of that week.
Work starts at 8.
Is it worth heading down there and swinging a free meal out of him? I think it is. You?

- - - - - - - - -

I should comment that the Northwestern Wildcats played a nice game of basketball last night, holding off the Miami Hurricanes. Craig Moore made seven-of-ten from the three-point arc, his best night as a Cat.

The Cats are 4-2 and, while they've lost to Cornell and needed a last-second tip-in to hold off North freakin' Florida (I was there!), they've also got wins over DePaul and Miami and a close loss to Stanford (who's not particularly good, but who is Stanford, a traditionally good program).

Anyway, I was looking at about a 5-25 season this year, or maybe an 8-22, but now it seems like they'll be right back where they've been in recent years: Hoping, and hoping, and hoping to get over .500 and to get into the NIT.

Considering that, you know, they're not very good basketball players, this is real promising.

Former Titan Jeff Ryan, by the way, is a baller. I'm very excited to watch his development.

- - - - - - - - -

The downside of the weekend was that my visit with Gurs and Bullshot was too brief and too mutually tired. That disappointment was slightly alleviated this evening, when Gurs and I spoke for about 45 minutes about nothing, then spoke about nothing for about 20 minutes about two hours later. It was about awesome. Also, it was primarily about this, which is not a link worth clicking.

- - - - - - - -

I guess that's all I got. Maybe some weekend hijinks.