Thanksgiving & aftermath

Animals are vicious, man. Did you know that a pack of squirrels can kill a dog?

Or that llamas sometimes get beserk male syndrome?

Anyway, Thanksgiving went well. We ate a turkey and a bunch of Chinese food. My mom came down from New Jersey and Katie's brother and sister drove in from Michigan and Washington D.C. respectively.

We saw Tuesdays with Morrie on Wednesday night at City Theatre (well, my mom and I did - Katie had to work the gift shop), which turned out to be pretty good. My favorite local actor (favorite = I've seen him in multiple things on local stages), Dan Krell, was in it. He's the younger guy.

Thursday, Katie's brother (Peder) arrived and we watched the parade, ate Chinese food, and played some video games. Later that night, I went over to my high school friend Matt Welch's house and hung out with ol' fogeys like Chase, Jeremy, Danny, and Sami. We just talked about old times (what else do we do when we get together?) for a couple hours and it was nice. I hadn't seem some of them in a couple of years now.

Friday, we went shopping (yes, how commercial of us). I also dragged Katie over to Danny's house, because we were going to be playing hockey but we arrived kind of late, so we just hung out, played some Dr. Mario and headed home. Katie started preparing the food for Saturday (which was going to be our big Thanksgiving meal day) and the rest of us watched TV, or played games, or did a puzzle, or something.

Saturday, Katie's sister (Tracy) arrived, and we ate food. Then, we went and watched Santa vs. the Snowman 3D on an IMAX screen at the Pittsburgh Mills. It was a comic riot, although it was also funny to see it with my mom, who would scream like a little child whenever something 3D came toward the audience.

Sunday, everyone left. Katie and her sister went wedding dress shopping. I took Peder to Save-Mor, where he bought 7 cases of Yuengling for his frat brothers.

This week has been rather slow at work. I've been working on my homebrew TiVo (built on Fedora Core 4 and mythTV, for those who care) while at home. I got it working right before Thanksgiving, and I've been tinkering with it to try and get some of the other things working (MAME emulation, playing video files, some sound issues), but it's a fantastic machine. The biggest hinderance now is our TV reception, which absolutely refuses to give us a good signal of ABC. Otherwise, it records wonderfully and has magical built-in commercial detection algorithms. Hopefully, we'll spring for cable come the new year and have clear reception for at least all our local channels.

Last night, Mike Yin scored some free passes to a preview showing of Aeon Flux, so we went to that with him and Grubb. It turned out to be a not entirely sucky movie, and it was certainly worth seeing at a price of $0. We still need to go see Rent.

So that's where I've been for the past few weeks. Anyway, we're going to see Little Footsteps tonight, so hopefully we'll get to hang out with S'n'S people tonight. Or just Theresa Lin. Those of you who aren't Theresa Lin but want to see me: let's do something this weekend that involves hot beverages and games of some kind.