Ending the month

Ending the month
I managed to survive Thanksgiving Day.

I was up at 6:30 AM and started to prepare the meal around 7:30 with dicing onions. Not the best way to begin a day. I finished making the dressing and I had to wait until it cooled before I stuffed the turkey.

I never knew that I was supposed to wait until the mixture had cooled first. And to think I have been making it wrong for the last thirty five or more years. I am still learning. I made some extra dressing because there is nothing worse than running out of dressing leftovers before you run out of turkey leftovers.

We had a pumpkin pie that came from the freezer. I baked that while the dressing cooled. I also set the table and did last minute cleaning stuff.

Fast forward to supper time.

We, that would be my former wife, my son and me, had a very ice meal although I thought the turkey turned out to be smaller than I thought it would be. It was an eleven pound Butterball turkey. My turkey leftovers were gone by noon on Saturday. I cooked and prepared the turkey with dressing, instant mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie.

After my guests left, I cleaned up for about an hour and a half.

I crawled in my bed at 8:30 PM and slept for almost ten hours. I guess I was tired.

Instead of going shopping on Friday after Thanksgiving, I rested. I weighed myself and was very pleased with myself for only gaining a half pound so far this holiday season.

Teaching
I finally got my teaching schedule for the coming quarter. It isn’t too bad. I have three classes again and that was a minor disappointment for me. I will be teaching Microeconomics, Research Methods, and Project Human Resource Management. I have taught these classes before.

Normally, the course would not be difficult to prepare for since they are repeaters for me. Microeconomics and Research Methods have had their curriculums completely revised so they will become new courses for me. I do have a week with nothing to do except relaxing and addressing Christmas cards so I do have time to prepare.

This quarter will mark the start of my sixth year of teaching at ITT Technical Institute.

This coming Saturday is the company holiday party. It will be different since three campus staffs are combining for one large event. That means there will be three separate groups sort of dining and partying together.

I had planned to go to the event with a date. That didn’t work out as planned. My last eHarmony match closed me out unexpectedly. I was over the closure in a minute or two.

eHarmony
As of the end of November, I had just over 460 closed matches. The closed matches are about equally split between her and me. Right now, I don’t plan to renew my membership when it runs out in December.

During the year, I did have several eHarmony matches that went somewhere beyond the initial exchange of information. There was the liberal political columnist who thought my libertarian-centrist views were a perfect match of her liberal views. She was sadly mistaken.

There were others who didn’t always tell the visual truth about themselves. I discovered that head shots and undated photos were signs something was amiss. One match used a photo that had to be twenty years old.

Honesty is the best policy.

Odds and Ends
I got lucky this month. We are having a warm spell in Southern California right now.

I drove home from school in the MINI yesterday with the top down. It was 88F when I left the campus; it was 67F by the time I reached the beach forty five minutes later. Today, I had to run out to pick up my lunch. It was 77F so I put the top down again.

I finished the draft of my 2011 Christmas Letter and sent it to the Princess and Doug. Doug liked it and only one minor change suggestion. Hopefully, the Princess will get back to me quickly with her comments.

This week, I sent my longest running Internet friend Lara from South Africa a package of coffee and Sunday comics. She loves our coffee and comics.


Be well and stay happy.