Thanksgiving, Canadian Style

This past weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving--for all my friends south of the border, it is basically like American Thanksgiving (family get-together, turkey, stuffing, pies, tryptophan, gluttony) except a month earlier and without the celebration of the slaughter of indigenous peoples. I was fortunate to be invited to Thanksgiving with the family of N., a friend and colleague of Jofish at Cornell who is from Waterloo; they both road tripped up for the weekend (In case you clicked on the link, she's the one in the red bustier/corset/thingy. Yeah. Yowza.)

Anyway, I am (quite amusingly) classified as an 'International Student' (being from that country south of here), so I end up on the mailing list for "Improving your conversational English," and "Workshop with the U.S. Consulate Representative." I brought a copy of this email to share with the family at dinner (delivered in most stilted and enunciated 'speaking-to-foreigners' English):

If you are invited to share a meal with a Canadian student or their family, take advantage of this opportunity! You'll get a chance to visit a local home and to experience a cultural tradition. The family will be preparing all the food, but often when Canadians are invited out for dinner, they bring a small gift, such as flowers or a small plant or a small box of chocolates. If you had a small gift from your home country, that would certainly be appropriate.

I was debating what gifts I should bring... it was a tossup between a vial of acid rain, or a smuggled handgun.

The family was an absolute hoot to hang out with--if my family were that open and fun, I would look forward to heading back to New York. The meal was great... all of the classics, especially stuffing that includes the giblets! Yay! The evening progressed into a game of bite the bag, um, but without the shotgunning beers after each round. It was something that my 24 inch inseam came in handy for.

Another thing Jofish and I did this weekend was hit the St. Jacob's Farmer's Market; it is a combination open-air weekend farmer's market, flea market, and food stands. For some reason, this flea market struck me as joyously cut-rate, as opposed to depressingly seedy, as most flea markets do. I had a good time watching Jofish haggle with the Middle Eastern guy selling socks out of an unmarked van:



"Twelve dollars? You are taking food out of the mouth of my children! No, not possible, not at that price..."

There is also an astoundingly soulless outlet mall as part of the complex. Jofish and I found the Lego outlet store, where we found the Lego 2005 Advent Calendar. No, I am not making this up.

Having an out of town visitor and a local guide gave me the opportunity to hit Waterloo bars that I have never been to. I am ashamed to admit that this was my first time at both the Jane Bond or Ethel's Lounge. Both of them get strong recommendations.

Monday was officially a day off, but we both had work to finish off, so we headed to a place with coffee and wireless access, and set up shop. I managed to get my abstract done; Jofish did something more worthwhile with his time: his ultracool LiveJournal word vs. mood correlation engine. He described the guts as a vector in 5000 dimensional space; after that, I kinda lost track.

Of course, I got to see Jofish in full-on programming-in-the-zone mode, including taking two minutes to respond to verbal stimuli, and having occasional cursing fits at his machine.



We spent Jofish's final evening in town killing off a few bottles; I'm afraid that it did some violence to my liver and GI tract (well, let it be said that a chorizo burrito with hot sauce is best enjoyed only once).



Jofish made it out of the ordeal with no apparent damage; I on the other hand struggled to keep down a piece of buttered toast, and barely survived a 9 AM three-hour class.

However, despite the negative experience of hangovers, I think that 'getting a good drunk on' with good friends is a cathartic (um... poor word choice) experience that should be done occasionally; perhaps once a year or so. It might be a zero sum game--you pay for the fun of the previous evening, with interest--but life at the dead average level without local maxima and minima is pretty friggin' dull.