Text 8255, 58 rader
Skriven 2013-12-27 07:28:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: trip 650
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Annie got this hankering for chicken-fried steak for lunch,
so I made a batch, cooking it in a mixture of bacon fat and
oil. It was pretty good, better as leftovers.

We went across the river to Mike and Jill's Christmas party:
these are the only family members living in the town where
their grandfather's stadium is, arriving half an hour early
to help get things set up. It's a modest house into which
they manage to cram half a hundred hungry people; a pretty
festive if peculiar venue.

A very standard holiday spread, various local cheeses,
Lebanon bologna (regular and garlic), mini-franks in some
kind of red ketchup sauce, Swedish meatballs (I ate myself
silly on these, as they were the only nonsweet that I thought
edible), salty roast beef, an actually okay ham, and Mike's
famous devilled eggs, famous mostly for the vast amount of
mustard that render them in my view next to inedible.

Sarah, the daughter, home from university, had all her friends
over, and they took over all the good seats in the living room.
I saw her hanging rather wistfully under the mistletoe (she is
not uncute but very young for her age).

Jeannette's daughter Jane arrived with Lily. For some
reason Lily took a shine to me after disliking me for the
last couple years. Jane is even hotter than Jeannette and
a bit of a boy magnet, one of these having caused Lily to
happen back when she was a teenager. One of these spent much
of her time flirting with me. It was the wrong one. It's quite
disconcerting being stalked by a 5-year-old.

Mike's cousin Dan showed up with his family; also Charlie,
who took up the slack when I got tired of entertaining Lily
and Jane. Also a bunch of Jill's relatives. Jill's dad earned
lots of amusement points when he told Annie that she talked
too much.

The sweet table was gorgeous, with every kind of cookie you
might dream of for Christmas; also homemade kettle corn,
some chocolatized to addictive perfection. I took an extra
metformin and dug in.

Many kinds of beer, which I eschewed. I tried that Maine Root
pumpkin pie soda, disappointing, and Wegmans grape soda, not
bad. After those samples I confined myself to Beam products -
Devil's Cut, Rye, and 4-year-old White Label, which I ended up
sticking with.

We spent 5 happy hours here, a bit of a surprise; we were
almost the first to show up and nowhere near the last to go.

The weather was turning wintry when we left, but as this town
rolls up its sidewalks early, there was no difficulty getting
home.

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