Not-So-Lonely Thanksgiving: Part I

Thanksgiving is a great holiday.  Good food, good drink, days off in the middle of the week, and football on Thursday that doesn’t require NFL Network.  Thanksgiving is also a time for family but since I’ve moved to Atlanta that has made seeing family a little more difficult seeing as how they all live in the Northeast (with the exception of my brother in Miami who is back up north anyway for the holiday).  Add on the fact that Anne has made the trip back to Virginia, Braveheart and I have the apartment to ourselves.

In lieu of family Thanksgiving, BH and I are enjoying the Second Annual Not-So-Lonely Thanksgiving down here in the ATL.  Most people seem to think a holiday with just your dog is depressing, but I strongly disagree.  For the second year in a row now I’ve turned Thanksgiving into a “Purge Weekend” where we’ll power through all the little side projects you keep telling yourself you’ll get to every weekend and inevitably end up getting distracted and forgetting it entirely.  I’m getting shit done this week and will share for everyone who thinks I’m just sitting around in my boxers eating jelly beans.  If you’re home this Thanksgiving, here’s some things you might want to consider to pass the time and actually be productive.

• Walk the Dog – With all the extra time on my hands, I knew the one thing I really wanted to do was give Braveheart lots of extra attention and walks.  Plus, he gets so happy when he gets to go for long walks!

Fearless leader

• Do Laundry – Lots and lots of laundry.  Clothes, bed sheets, towels, bath mats…give yourself a fresh (ba dum, cha!) start after Thanksgiving.  God knows things get nuts between now and and the end of the year.
• Clean the Fridge – This means more than just throwing out the old leftovers and replacing the box of baking soda.  Take the time to empty the fridge, clean the insides, and reorganize so that you know where everything is.  I’ll be doing a lot of cooking this weekend so I did this early in the break, that way I don’t have to go digging for my ingredients every time I want to try something new.  Who knows, maybe you’ll find that for some reason you’ve kept not one, but two empty Parmesan cheese containers in the back of the fridge…

Believe it or not, there was a 3rd (full) one of these in the fridge as well…

• Clean & Organize the Bathroom – Organize being the operative word here.  Empty the closets and drawers and make sure everything has a home.  The biggest accomplishment for me in the bathroom arena was consolidating all the damn bobby pins from the 4 corners of the Earth into one basket.
• Organize your Desk – Or, someone else’s desk.  Anne, for example, uses her desk as a massive shelving unit with no particular order to anything.  Will make for a nice surprise when she comes home and the desk no longer looks like this:

Before…

After!

• Clean Oven – No one ever wants to clean the oven.  Ever.  Cleaning your oven is like getting gas: you’ll put it off as long as you can until you can physically no longer use the car without it.  The same goes for the oven but I will tell you that it does feel good when everything is nice and shiny.
• Catch Up on TV – This will be a recurring theme throughout the weekend.  I’ve found that having a list of shows you want, whether new shows you’ve been meaning to try or old shows you need to catch up on, prevents a lot of the “what should I watch?” conundrums.  Here’s what I’ve been watching over the past two days:
  • The Amazing Race
  • Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23
  • The Simpsons
  • Up All Night
  • 30 Rock
  • Chopped
  • Happy Endings

• Play Assassin’s Creed III – ‘Nuff said.  If there is anything on my weekend To-Do list that doesn’t get done, it will be because I spent too much time playing Assassin’s.
• Cook! – Another recurring theme we’ll see over the next few days, but take this extra time you’ve got and actually do some cooking!  Yesterday, I busted out a nice Taco dinner, complete with fresh veggies and homemade Mojito.

Me gusta

A last bit of quick advice for those of you similarly displaced this Thanksgiving, I highly recommend Google+ (yes, Google+) hangout to see your family.  Most of my family at least already has a Gmail account so it was easy to get everyone online and sharing screens to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving beyond just the phone call.

I’ll update tomorrow about how Not-So-Lonely Thanksgiving is going!