kevin_standlee | Calendar Shifted Thanksgiving

In the alternative universe where COVID-19 never happened, today would have been the fourth day of the 2021 Worldcon, and Lisa and I would have been much too busy to do anything associated with my birthday. But in this universe, assuming thing go as planned (and that's a big assumption), Lisa and I will be on the road to Loscon 47 / Westercon 73 on Thanksgiving day this year, so we won't be in a position to do a traditional feast either then or on Christmas, when we'll be on board the City of New Orleans as part of our "circle trip" to this year's time-shifted Worldcon in December. So Lisa decided to cook a Thanksgiving meal today.

Instead of duck, this year we got a nice ham from Butcher Boy in Reno. To accompany it, Lisa made some biscuits and also baked beans with mushrooms. It was all very good, and I was very glad that that the air quality had improved sufficiently that we could take a long walk after dinner, because we needed it after all that food.

Lisa also left me a birthday gift that I found this morning after sleeping in a few hours.

This is a 1970s-era Amtrak luggage tag (still sealed in its original packaging) and watch fob, the latter of which I have attached to the Japanese railway watch that Lisa gave me for my birthday a couple of years ago. We're debating whether I should break the seal on the luggage tag and attach it to my suitcase when we set off for DC in early December.

Thanks to the somewhat better air quality, we could sit out on the porch after having a slice of pumpkin pie (time-shifted Thanksgiving, remember) and watch the quail and rabbits forage in the field next door without having to worry about masking against smoke or dealing with eye irritation. But the winds are shifting again, and there's no telling what tomorrow will be like.