We were sitting at a small table next to the window talking about our trip to Cincinnati for Thanksgiving to visit my brother- and sister-in-law and our cute little nephew. We had the dining room practically to ourselves and we talked about how they just moved there about six months ago and we hadn’t been to see their new house yet. We were excited.

And right when our waitress came over to bring us our food, Pat said we were going to have a turducken.

A turducken??? I asked.

Yes! he said.

Have you ever had a turducken? I asked the waitress as she put our plates down. She looked at me like I was a bit crazy before smiling at me. Like I was a bit crazy. We’re going to have one for Thanksgiving. I think it’s a duck in a turkey.

No, I haven’t, she said. Hmm… I’ll go ask. And right like that, she headed off to the kitchen.

We laughed, picked at our food and stared out the window. She came back about a minute later.

It’s a duck in a chicken in a turkey, she said. (Her uncle, I think, who is also the chef at the restaurant) told her to tell us that it takes like 10 hours to cook.

Ten hours! I said. Oh my God! That’s like the Thanksgiving we had in San Antonio with Pat’s family when the turkey took six hours to cook because the meat thermometer had melted and was stuck on 140 degrees.

We all started laughing and she started telling us about her Thanksgiving. Her family, which owns the restaurant, was going to have 70 people over for Thanksgiving at her grandmother’s house. They were going to cook all the turkeys and hams at the restaurant and everyone else was going to bring side dishes. My grandmother will probably call me and send me to the ABC store to get all the liquor, because we all go through a bunch of wine and stuff, she said.

Of course! Can you imagine 70 PEOPLE at your house for Thanksgiving?

Then her other uncle came over and we talked about the turducken, how it comes deboned and takes a long time to cook. She took off and grabbed a framed picture off the wall. It was of her family last Thanksgiving and we counted about 40 smiling people standing in front of a brick house. She pointed out her mom, her grandmother. We laughed that people were going to have to sit on the roof this year to get in the picture.

I asked how they make all the food and she said her grandmother has six ovens in her house. SIX. That’s where all the cakes and Greek desserts for the restaurant come from, too, from this house with six ovens. So there are plenty of places to cook, she said.

By that time, Pat and I had finished lunch and were ready to go. We asked each other’s names and promised to report back about our Thanksgivings when we saw each other next. 

When we got to Cincinnati, Pat and his brother headed out to get the turduckens. An hour or so later, they came back with bags of groceries: cranberries, green beans, and TWO turduckens. Thankfully, they were just the breasts of the birds, not the entire things.  We, still debated the best cooking times Madden style. Paula Deen would have been proud.

It was, of course, delicious. See?

To end the perfect turducken Thanksgiving, we headed out to dance with the baby to reggaeton at full volume. We might make this all a new tradition. I think the Pilgrims would have been proud.

And while I’m now calculating how many trips to gym I have to make to cancel out all the Thanksgiving festivities, I’m still laughing about how the holiday was filled with unexpected friendship-making and fun. I hope yours was just as fun!

©2012 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

©2012 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

Pat and I took a drive through Oak Island this afternoon. It was sunny out and if it had been June or July, the roads would have been busy. Kids holding boogie boards and pink inflatable rafts would have been waiting at the side of the road to cross and go through a public access parking lot to the soft, soft sand next to the calm Atlantic. But it was cold outside. Not snow cold, but stick-in-your ear cold. We drove through and found a spot here, in the parking lot at the marina. We were the only ones walking around, even though all the slips were filled with empty boats, noses pointed out to the open water, but tethered and bobbing like anxious hunting dogs at a tree.

There’s a reason I love traveling in the off season. While I love the crowds and the fact that the local coffee shop stays open past 3 p.m. during the summer, I also love walking about, looking at things up close. There’s an anonymity to the solitude, the implied permission to look at things and wander aimlessly. I love this, though, I admit, because I love being alone most times. Today, this empty parking lot reminded me, again, that sometimes solitude is enough.

©2012 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

Sometimes I wish my thoughts came in pictures. You may be one of those people I envy, those highly visual people who find pattern and color and contrast in everything. I find myself looking for words – reading signs, looking at the combinations of consonants and vowels. My photos are frequently filled with them. But sometimes you just can’t help it. The words jump out at you, like they did over my trip to Boston.

I mean, just look at this. Dr. Paul! You are amazing! Stars and eyes, flourishes and block print. I can’t beat it if I tried.

And I wish every single neighborhood had a corner store whose windows were covered in signs like this (and had the same three guys standing out front cat-calling the group of teenage girls flirting with them across the street). I managed to snap a few photos of some of the most creative signage I’ve seen. Read the fine print, people.

If you’re tongue-tied, here’s what to say:

A play about the 2004 World Series, all on this poster (larger version here):

And if you’re a table-tennis champion without your equipment, here’s where to go. Just don’t speak French:

Artful, comedic, philosophical. And the ones that deserve to be carved in stone. I loved them all. Do you?

©2012 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

When I’m in these moments, I feel this soaring joy at being alive. I know it’s a sentimental thought, but I love it then.

When I was in Boston recently (which was, by the way, filled with these moments!), we wandered around the streets of Arlington on Halloween night. Little Tairou was dressed as a lion and my friends Melody and Josh pulled him along in the dark as he sat in the back of a red wagon and we tried to coax him to say “trick or treat” to perfect strangers. Early in the night, we turned a corner and saw a group of people gathered at one side of the street, so we all wandered over there, too.  A tall, muscled, red-haired, pony-tailed guy was bent over a set of tables erected on the side of his yard. A small desk lamp was propped on a music player, sending beams of light onto tubs of hot dogs and vats of chili. When he saw us, he sang out a big hello and he started dishing out bowls of chili for us, telling us he’d won awards for his slow-cook chili.

We stood around on the sidewalk, balancing bowls of warm, tomato-y chili in our hands, as he told us about growing up in this house, in this neighborhood. Every Halloween, he tries to cook something for people in the neighborhood. He and I started talking about barbecue — he’s getting a smoker built, he said — and when he told us he a musician, he ran inside to get us some CDs of his band, the Dave Sammarco Band. When I asked if I could take his picture, he said, “Hold on, let me get my glasses on.”

I could have stayed there all night talking with him about living in Arlington and his band and his burgeoning catering business. But we slid on down the sidewalk to gather more candy and head to a nearby Korean restaurant. It was the perfect night, the perfect Boston moment. Do you have these moments, too?

©2012 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

I’m visiting one of my best friends. And since we’re in Massachusetts, of course a staked witchy, jack-o-lantern would be one of the first things I see.

©2012 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

©2012 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

In other news, check out this Flickr set. Not only are the images hilarious, so are the comments. A rare combo treat in the Flickr world! I love this! I’ve spent too much time looking at them instead of learning web design or something worthwhile. But really, poses with mashed potatoes trump most everything in my book. Also, check out this very fun audio compilation of sounds of Chinatown.

©2012 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

John Powers says “You I like. But you, you I’m not so impressed with. Leon is not the smartest, but he’s a gem.”
White Castle and chewing tobacco
“I wish you … terrible lovemaking”
Oysters on the half shell
Princess Diana and the loudest organ in the world
Winning 60 cents on yellow No. 4
The Palace Theater and the naked baby doll
One of the top 50 bars in the world
Bourbon and buggery, the pillars
Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby
Learning what a trifecta is
Kabucki Theater, for five hours at least

Maybe just showing you this list reveals what I mean to tell you about, which is, essentially that this weekend was equally one of the most bizarre and funniest I’ve had. Louisville is/was CRAZY. Or maybe it was just the company I’ve been keeping lately.

©2012 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

Oh, wait, I said. I have everything down except the drug and alcohol abuse. But there are 362 days left in 2008! Don’t give up yet! Everyone laughed. Then, Pat, who sat quietly in our living room listening to the millionth time about how all of this, offered this: “That’s why I want to move to Argentina.”

Seriously? Really? What should I pack?

I should say this is not 100 percent out of the blue. He’s been talking of leaving for a while. First it was to New York. Then Portland. And apparently that’s just not far enough, so Buenos Aires is now the location of choice. This is not helping, particularly the witticisms and beautiful photos. Apparently he spent a lot of time reading about Buenos Aires today since it reached a whopping 10 degrees in the sun today. It sounds better and better, and who needs to know Spanish beforehand? I can mime the universal cupped hand to mouth with the best of them until my tongue and mind adjusts. How much does coffee cost there?

©2012 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.