Change of Thanksgiving Plans

We ended up changing plans for our Thanksgiving day for various reasons all more than likely related to my history of bad luck on past Thanksgivings.  This day has always been my least favorite day of the year and today was a great example of why I feel this way.

First, at some point when I started to prep for our Thanksgiving dinner, I realized that I forgot to set a calendar alarm to remind me to remove the turkey breast from the freezer on Tuesday.  That meant that our turkey breast was still in the freezer and frozen solid.  After a few choice words flew from my mouth, I moved the turkey breast to the fridge and quickly accepted the fact that our traditional Thanksgiving dinner was now moved to Saturday.  I don't even like turkey so I'm not sure why I continue to make this particular meal.  

Then, we received a weather alert...  A snowstorm was approaching and would begin sometime Thanksgiving night.  This meant that I would need to head outside to prepare for significant snow.  Other than for hospital visits, I really haven't been outside much in the past few months. My health has been that lousy and painful.

Because my health has been abysmal for close to two years since having this pandemic virus, I have accomplished absolutely nothing outside.  We are not at all prepared for winter.  With the approaching storm, we needed to get outside, regardless of how I'm feeling, to get everything ready for the long winter.

This means lifting things, climbing ladders, moving a bunch of tools to indoors, moving snow removal stuff to where we can easily access it, and even using scrap plywood to add a rudimentary roof and walls to a roughly framed shed.  This unfinished shed is where we plan to store our summer stuff.  

My lingering inflamed knees, ankles...  well, all my joints...  were not at all happy about trying to climb a ladder.  I had difficulty getting up and down the ladder.  I had to step up one step at a time leading with my left leg while going up because I do not have the flexibility nor strength in my right knee and then do the opposite when coming down off the ladder.  

We cut up some scrap plywood and then I managed to get up and down a ladder well enough to install a rudimentary roof and wall or two to temporarily keep snow off our summer furniture.  Then we moved everything (I hope) to where it needs to be for winter.

Of course, we still managed to eat throughout Thanksgiving day regardless of the boneheaded move with our turkey breast.  I made a nice egg sandwich on a bagel with some fried potatoes and bacon on the side for breakfast.  That was pretty good...

After breakfast, Sheila and I got started on making an Italian Pear Cake.  This is sort of a vanilla cake topped with sweet pear strips.  After it cooled down briefly, we removed the baking paper and covered the top with powdered sugar.

Before we started on our alternate dinner, we needed to head outside to prepare for a winter storm.  I then painfully limped back inside to get started on dinner.  

I decided to make a Honey Garlic Chicken dish.  I don't know why I expected my luck to change on this miserable day but, for some ridiculous reason, I did.  I've never liked Thanksgiving...  it is perhaps my least favorite day of the year....  perhaps my most despised day or the year....  and this particular Thanksgiving didn't seem to be improving at all.  It turns out that even though this sounds like a really nice alternate Thanksgiving meal, I burned our alternate dinner.  Here is a shot of it as it was being put in the oven....  It looks good here at this point...

This great looking chicken dish with onions, golden potatoes and carrots came out of the oven almost completely black.  I'm really not a fan of poultry but blackened poultry is even worse.  Needless to say, my mood did not improve any.  My mood was a bit dark already simply because it was Thanksgiving.  Then my mood dipped even further when I realized I left the turkey breast in the freezer.  Now my mood plunged even further when I pulled this chicken dish out of the oven and saw that it was blackened.  Have I mentioned that Thanksgiving is the worst day of the year?

The day wasn't a complete loss though.  We did manage to get our yard ready for snow.  We watched the Dayton Flyers basketball team, which is all freshmen, run the University of Miami off the court and I got to have a few beers, potato chips and homemade onion dip while watching a good basketball game.  Today Dayton plays #4 nationally ranked Kansas in the finals of this tournament but I do not expect this freshman team to fare nearly as well against an always strong Kansas team.  It was a nice surprise to see Dayton play so well yesterday though!

Now, what shall we do for dinner today?

POST EDIT:  Well, the Dayton Flyer basketball team made up of freshmen beat the #4 nationally ranked Kansas Jayhawks!  They won at the buzzer!  This game will be the talk of the NCAA for the rest of the season.  This very young and inexperienced team played very well.  The coaching of Anthony Grant was exceptional and it shows when such a young team can upset such as well-established and experienced team such as Kansas. 

I was living in Dayton in the days when Anthony Grant was playing for Dayton.  We (an Air Force team that I played on during my days in Dayton) occasionally played scrimmage games against Dayton.  Coach Donaher (the Dayton coach at the time) liked having his team scrimmage against us whenever schedules would allow.  Anthony Grant went on to be an assistant coach for Billy Donovan at Florida.  And, my history is linked with Billy Donovan too which is why I actively follow Florida and Dayton to this day.