Turkey, traffic, and textiles

Last Thanksgiving, I drove from Philly into NYC via the Lincoln Tunnel, picked up my sister on the Upper West Side, drove back through the Lincoln Tunnel, and we continued on our way to Ohio. Lots of traffic, but I don't mind the Lincoln Tunnel, despite the lack of organization to the merge. I foolishly believed that upon moving to Ohio and leaving behind the most congested portion of the 95 corridor, my Thanksgiving travel would be a breeze. The drive between Cincinnati and Cleveland looks really innocuous; bucolic farmland, Columbus to break things up in the middle, outlet malls, truck stop after truck stop after truck stop, flat and generally pretty boring. And totally unpredictably crazy, stop-and-go, Lincoln Tunnelish traffic.

I had the best intentions of blogging Thanksgiving dinner, which obviously did not pan out because I spent half the day chopping root vegetables. The essence:
Successful turkey! Not dry, cooked all of the way through, tasted good. Science and methodical recipe research do pay off.
We made lamb tongues, a popular Syrian dish around the holidays. They don't taste like chicken.
My favorite pie crust recipe
I made French macarons that looked pretty and tasted better, despite all the drama on the blogs that they are très impossible!
I bought a mandoline (the slicer, not the instrument) and attractively and creatively sliced an apple, since we were all out of root vegetables.
I knitted 2 1/2 hats.

I was and am thankful for many people and things this Thanksgiving holiday, except for the rain and traffic that prevented me from getting back to Cincinnati in time to have knitted 3 hats.

How the "smoky evening eye" plays out at Costco

So I'm going to totally come clean on why I have not been blogging: my recent attendance at an ethics CE course on social networking, etc. Sometimes I think it would cause me much less anxiety in multiple realms of my life if I had just gone the bakery route. They don't have confusing and vague guidelines about what is actually my private versus professional life. I really like blogging. It makes me sad that I'm not sure what the best way is to continue to do it. I'm not giving up yet, just pondering.

In other news: I had a birthday, which I did not blog about because for some reason, for the first time in my life, I felt kind of bummed out to be growing older. And this is definitely not a sad sack blog. I did, however, treat myself to some makeup and a trip to Costco on my birthday. Costco is really close to the mall and every gal likes to look pretty when doing warehouse shopping. I seem to have developed seasonal allergies during my stint in Philadelphia, so I decided a jaunt to my favorite store to buy Claritin D in bulk was in order. Some of you may see where this is going. I have said before that I have a what feels like a freakish amount of education and am sometimes sadly lacking in common sense. They don't sell things that can make meth in bulk. Even at Costco. Duh. I made do with some bottled water (not Aquafina, I'm so sorry) and a giant box of instant oatmeal. 34 promises to be a good year, filled with plenty of hot cereal, congested sinuses, and enough bottled water to get me to 35.