November 24

[Taken October 26, 2007 | Moss on a tree at Newfound Gap | Great Smoky Mountains National Park, TN]

It has been busy.

London for a week. Then Munich for a week. Now... home. For slightly less then a week.

At least I was home for Thanksgiving. A Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant in some other city is not something that I think that I would enjoy doing.... especially since I think that one of the best parts of the Thanksgiving dinner is the leftover the day after. Especially the leftover stuffing... mmmmm....

I make my stuffing from a recipie that I got from my Grandma, that she got from my Great-aunt Agnes. It is so simple, and yet so good... and so very very bad for you, I am sure. Basically you take a bunch of stale, cubed bread (I like to use potato bread) and fry it u pin about a half pound of butter until it is all golden brown. Then you mix it up with 4 eggs and some chicken seasoning. Then it all goes inside the bird. I know that the conventional wisdom is that stuffing should not be cooked inside the bird, since it has the potential to be "unhealthy". I say "bah!" to conventional wisdom. Stuffing baked in the bird tasts so much better since it has the chance to absorbe all of the lovely meat juices.

I made the turkey with stuffing, baked carrots and potatoes and parsnips (baked in with the turkey), cranberry sauce, and sweet potato pie.

3+ hours to cook everything. Less then 30 minutes to eat it all and proclaim oneself "quite stuffed".

For after dinner, I recommend Willemsbrand pear schnapps... which is both very high octane and a very good after-dinner aperitif if you have had a very heavy meal.  This is something useful that I picked up when I was in Munich last week, where I was eating a lot of very heavy (and very tasty) Bavarian food.  Schnapps really settles the stomach nicely.

All told, I had a good Thanksgiving, even though I didn’t go anywhere… Actually, maybe it was good because I didn’t go anywhere.  I have been traveling so much lately that it was just nice to stay at home and putter around in a bathrobe and slippers and not have to worry about being social or doing much of anything beyond editing photos, reading, and relaxing.

Tomorrow I leave again. This time I am going to the RSNA conference in Chicago. It should be interesting.

November 2

[Taken October 27, 2007 | Ramsey Cascades | Great Smoky Mountains National Park, TN]

I don't get much of a break or much down time between coming back from the vacation, and the next big thing at work... in this case the next big thing is a rather extended (2 week long) business trip. I will be spending a week in London, working with the agile development team there, and then I am moving on to Munich for a week-long series of meetings to kick off another project.

I can't fit all of the clothing that I will need for two weeks into a single suitcase, which is a tad annoying since I don't like having to schlep around a lot of luggage. Can't be helped in this case, I suppose...

The work and the meetings don't worry me... those will be fine. What does worry me is that there is no way on earth that I can possibly bring enough books with me to see me through two weeks worth of business travel. This is where I wish I had an ebook reader with a small to medium sized library loaded on it. As is, my only option is to pack as many books as I can into my suitcase(s) and hope for the best.

Anyway, since I leave tomorrow, I had better get packing.