Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Banned Beer and Other Things

Thanksgiving is finally over at the Young household. I cooked a turkey for the second time in my life. After getting it all prepared and ready to go into the oven, I remembered why this was only the second turkey I'd ever cooked for Thanksgiving. Apparently, the inside of a frozen turkey is the best possible place to hide the parts that are supposed to make up the "giblet" part of "Giblet Gravy". Since neither me nor my wife are fans of what amounts to "Gravy Made of Chopped Up Bits of Turkey Gizzard, Turkey Heart and Turkey Liver", these got cooked and offered to the cats.

Toby, our oldest cat, pawed at the offered turkey bits and promptly tried to "cover them up" by scratching at the carpet. Keep in mind Toby normally has all the discrimination of a garbage disposal and he was turning this stuff down cold. Yoda, our youngest cat, discovered that if she tossed the gizzard up into the air on the linoleum it would bounce...much like a Meat Superball. While she too refused to actually EAT it, it has become her favoite toy. As soon as possible, Mr. Bouncy Gizzard is getting tossed outside. She has hidden him somewhere and I'm hoping I can find him before he starts to...umm...stink.

The dinner turned out to be quite good, despite the turkey coming out a bit dry. I cooked that sucker in a baking bag WITH water and WITH butter and it still came out dry. It was edible, but I prefer to not have to wash my turkey down. The gravy mix (Turkey, of course) made it more palitable and went quite well with the dressed up Stove Top stuffing and the mashed potatoes. The rest of the turkey has been ground up and made into Turkey Salad...a good 10 pounds of it. Apparently, a 12 pound turkey gains weight AFTER it's cooked and placed in a refrigerator overnight. When I got ready to make that salad, I would swear on a bible that there was at LEAST 20 pounds of turkey there.

Julie started a new job on Black Friday. She's working at a Toys R Us near Scottsdale and seems to enjoy it. Her job on Black Friday was to "stand guard" over the "X-Men Movie" DVD display. She got geeked up on Monster Energy Drink and vanilla Zingers, but no one got a DVD before it was time. I think the customers were afraid of her. By the time she got off work that day, she was on such a sugar/caffeine jag that she was vibrating like a...well...like a vibrator! (Sorry folks...the Similie Well is running low tonight). I almost tried to slip a quarter behind her ear when we went to bed that night. It was like sleeping on one of those "Magic Fingers" vibrating beds, except it kept stealing the covers.

While watching the local news tonight, I learned that a new beer is coming to Arizona. I'm not a beer drinker...never really cultivated a taste for it, actually. And in the case of this particular beer, that may be a GOOD thing. The beer is made by the good folks at Samuel Adams and goes by the name of "Utopia"...apparently because that's where it sends you after you drink one bottle of the stuff. It has 27% (yes, I said TWENTY SEVEN PERCENT) alcohol by volume, sells for $150.00 a bottle (U.S.) and has already been BANNED in 13 states.

Now, I'm from Oklahoma originally. Here in Arizona you can get "Six Point Beer", as well as hard liquor, any place in the state outside of a church or the Election Board. Back in Oklahoma, the best you can hope for is 3.2 beer at the grocery store. If you want anything stronger than that, you have to go to a liquor store. They have liquor stores here in Phoenix, but I think they're only here for people who feel funny about telling some guy behind a counter, "Twenty bucks on pump 3, a lottery ticket and a pint of Jack Daniels, please!"

However, liquor stores aren't quite as common here as they are back in my home state. In the area I grew up in (near Tulsa) you could find a Quik-Trip Convenience Store on one corner, a (I swear, I'm not making this name up) Kum & Go Convenience Store on another corner, a strip mall, non-denominational, church on the 3rd corner and a liquor store on the 4th corner. All your needs, physical and spiritual (in more ways than one), all in one convenient spot.

We're planning to make a return visit to Sooner Land sometime after the first of the year. My high school graduating class is planning a thirty year class reunion. We all want to see each other again before we all get Alzheimers and are unable to keep track of our OWN names, much less each others. Getting back in touch with people I haven't seen for the larger part of thirty years has been rather enlightening. While we've all gotten older and, for the most part, "grown up", we still can talk about stuff that happened 30 or 40 years ago and laugh about it...or rant about it...or a combination of the two. A lot of the people I graduated with are GRANDPARENTS now...and it just doesn't seem possible to me. It's hard to accept that someone that I last saw when they were a vibrant, vital youth of 18 is now not only a mother or father several times over, but now has ankle-biters that call them "Gramma" and "Gran'pa".

I'm happy for them in all honesty. Because they're grandparents, they can now exact a little "payback" on their own kids. Give those grandkids a Hershey Bar and a 20 ounce bottle of Mountain Dew about an hour before the parents come to pick them up and be all "sweetness and light" when they get the call saying that little Bobby or Susie is insisting on climbing the walls and putting footprints on the ceiling. BWAHAHAHA!!!