Turkey, Hot Dogs, and Chili

I hope everyone enjoyed sharing in the great American tradition of gorging on turkey and battering crowds of demented shoppers at five in the morning this year. Vivian and I got to enjoy having Thanksgiving in Cedar Rapids, the first time as husband and wife. We hit the road bright and early at 4:30 AM, arriving in mid-morning with plenty of time to play games with cousins and their kids. We had a big turkey dinner and then settled in to watch home movies and play games. There was a rousing game of Wii volleyball, and then Shannon got to kick my butt while playing chess. We also had a fun game of Balderdash that evening, with Vivian defining dungarunga as an Australian Pooper Scooper, and me spelling out SBA as the Sagging Bottoms Association.

The next morning, Uncle Ben took us out for Coffee at a local coffee shop called Brewed Awakenings, which has to be the absolute coolest name ever. We also dropped by to visit my Grandma Gibbs at the nursing home. Her Alzheimer's is unfortunately progressing to the point where she's having trouble eating, but it was good to visit her and see her somewhat responsive. When they started serving lunch, Vivian stayed by her side with my Uncle Jim for well over an hour coaxing her into eating something. I'm reminded day after day what a wonderful woman I married.

After saying goodbye, we headed downtown to have some lunch. On the way, we toured some of the flood damage from the Great Flood of 2008 There were plenty of depressed-looking homes tagged "unsafe" with spray paint and condemnation notices. I'd seen the photos like everybody else, but when you drive through dozens of city blocks that were all underwater and now remain uninhabitable, the reality really hits you hard.

Fortunately, one of the businesses that went underwater and survives just fine was the Flying Wienie: a hot dog restaurant our family fondly remembers passing by every time we went to church at Valley View (where my parents were married, by the way). We got to enjoy some supposedly authentic Chicago-style hot dogs, though I'll need some authority like Onion-Boy to give us the official verdict on this.

And speaking of Onion-Boy, Vivian and I returned Saturday to enjoy a Chili Throwdown over at his apartment. We had a number of admirable contestants creating some mouth-watering (and searing) concoctions. I liked Mark's spicy little pot of steak chili the best, though I was impressed how Ben's experimental beet chili made those dirty little vegetables nearly palatable. After stuffing ourselves, we played a bunch of games together. They included Werewolf, a 2.0 version of Mafia that included expanded roles for the bunch of us who didn't get to participate in killing other guests while they slept. We also played a long, long game of What's Yours Like, which offered up many "TMI" moments as we tried giving each other the worst clues ever for one word or another. It was a good time, though while we enjoyed ourselves with chili, some freezing rain outside made it a little difficult for some other people to get home. I-80 and 75 were apparently shut down due to accidents.

On Sunday, I had Thanksgiving with my new in-laws, Jack and Donna. We had more turkey, watched some home videos courtesy of Vivian's Aunt Alice, and played a couple rounds of Mappy, a classic video game from 1983 that Donna is apparently hooked on. It came as part of a five-in-one standalone video game console that you hook up to your TV. I bought it for Jack as a Christmas present last year, and I'm happy to see it getting such good use now that we actually figured out how to hook it up to the TV.