Happy Tofurkey Day? Or is that Happy Faux Turkey Day!? Good questions. Happy Thanksgiving.
Everyone was tired here this morning and had a really hard time pulling ourselves out of bed. We didn’t get moving nearly as early as we had hoped. We were not on the road until almost 11:00. We had a hard time decided whether or not we were going to drive out to Frankfort which is almost three hours away because the weather was kind of ify and it could easily turn into bad snow. We looked at a bunch of web sites and talked to dad and finally decided that it seemed to be safe enough considering that I had just put my winter tires on the car last night so we would have pretty good traction. I have Nokian snow tires and they are just amazing.
Most of the drive was pretty good. Before we got to Syracuse we started hitting some serious snow and that made the drive a lot slower. The roads were not bad until we got to Utica. Then it started getting really slippery and a lot of people were having problems keeping their vehicles on the road. So the last bit of the drive was bad but not terrible. With my Nokians it wasn’t any problem at all.
It was just after 1:30 when we arrived in Frankfort. We ended up making much better time than we had thought that we would have been able to make. We ended up making it in enough time to be able to put our Tofurkey into the oven and to get it cooked before we went over to Dominica’s grandfather’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. We hadn’t thought that we were going to have made it out so quickly so that was a pleasant surprise.
While we were at Min’s parent’s house we took the opportunity to look through all of the Black Friday specials in the newspaper just in case we wanted to go shopping tomorrow for anything really awesome. There is always a lot of stuff that we would like in the big sales but normally nothing that we want so badly to make fighting through those crowds worth it at all. But saw a number of items that we were interested in but didn’t think too much of it.
It was just a little after 3:00 when we went over to grandpa Tocco’s house for dinner. We ate around 4:00. The Tofurkey Feast was awesome. Much better than real turkey because real turkey gets dry and tough but this was really tender and delicious and a whole bunch less work than the actual bird. The feast came with all of the fixings. It was just like a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Dominica and I will definitely be getting that again. We were really happy with it and there was a lot left over as well so we will get some mileage out of it. Thanksgiving at Dominica’s family is now one third vegetarian! It always seemed to me that we were a pretty small minority but in reality we are a pretty big sub-section of the family. Only need to convert two more people and we have a majority! Ha ha, the plot thickens. Resistance is futile.
After dinner but before dessert we were all standing around and Dominica’s brother Joe accidentally bumped the small kitchen television with his elbow and it turned on and we saw the Weather Channel doing their coverage of the snowy conditions along i90. We looked outside and the weather wasn’t looking like it was going to be all that cooperative so we deicded that it would just be safer if we hit the road right away instead of waiting for it to get really bad and then getting stuck out in Frankfort. Both Dominica and I have to work in the morning so we need to get back. Dominica definitely can’t miss her job tomorrow. She hasn’t even been there for three weeks yet.
The drive back to Geneseo wasn’t too bad. There was a lot of high speed winds and some snow. None of the roads were horrible but I am very glad that we came back when we did because it could have gotten pretty bad. As it was the drive took an extra hour.
We got to Geneseo at 8:00 or a little after. Dominica decided to stay home and not to go to the ninth annual Sonic Brass Thanksgiving Dinner at Nick Tahou’s. She has a really long day tomorrow and needs to get some sleep so that she will be able to work. So she stayed home and went to bed early. I left at 9:30 to go up to the city for some Tahou’s. Nate and Tammy forgot to call to see if I was home or we would have carpooled since they were coming from Perry.
Like every year, the Tahou’s dinner was at 10:00. We started this tradition in 1997 and we are still going strong. This year we had a pretty weak turn out but that happens from time to time. Last year we had seventeen people show up, I think. This year there was only seven. Nate, Joe and I have made it every year so far. Next year is ten. We had better have tons of people show up next year. The big news from tonight is that Jeff Simpson, who hasn’t made it to the Thanksgiving Dinner in several years, returned unexpectedly. He and his wife Danielle have recently moved back to the Rochester area from Madison, Wisconsin and have yet to hook back up with everyone out here. This is the first time that I have seen Jeff in probably four years. It is really cool that he is back in town. Hopefully we will be able to get together sometime soon to hang out.
Joe Howlett took the old Sonic Brass music today. I have been storing it for as long as I can remember. Some of it since 1993. There have been two good sized bins in the basement that have been being used for that and it is actually pretty nice to have them out of here. We need the space more than we need to store brass ensemble music. It isn’t very likely that Sonic is going to be getting together anytime in the near future. Joe and Josh still play a bit and I am pretty sure that Crissman is playing all of the time. But other than that. I have played since Waltermeirer’s wedding and Nate and Jeff haven’t picked up their instruments since the ensemble broke up in the mid 1990’s. It is hard to believe that it has been that long. We were still playing in 1997, I think, but things were winding down at that point. Joe and I should get together and put together a little history and an informational web page. It would be great to play again but it is tough living in a townhouse with neighbours that actually share a wall.
We all left Tahou’s around 11:15. It was getting late and we are all getting old. I drove home and pretty much went straight to bed. Dominica had been asleep for a while by the time that I got in. We had decided that there appeared to be a number of sales tomorrow that we wanted to take advantage of so I have to get up really early in the morning for that. Black Friday shopping should be an experience for me.