Thanksgiving break essentially began on the night of Thursday, November 18, 2004. I stayed up until the wee hours of the night playing Halo 2, watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force DVDs, and packing up all the stuff I'd need for the trip. My roommate was trying to sleep, so I had to pack in the dark, which was an interesting feat in its own right. Anyway, the next morning (at about 8:15 AM) the B showed up at my dorm and we threw all my stuff in his car. Then it was off to calculus II, engineering orientation, and my history class. Lastly came band. Band was rainy and cold and miserable and wet. Ugh. After band, I got in the car of one of my fellow trumpeters and was swiftly off to Birmingham.

Somewhere in the middle of Friday, I went to the restroom. And somehow, I managed to produce green poop. http://www.heptune.com/poop.html proved extremely helpful in my curiousness about what had happened - apparently, I either a) "[ate] a diet high in leafy green vegetables," b) "consume[d] large quantities of food coloring (in ice cream, cake frosting, etc.)", c) am "afflicted with diarrhea," or d) have "excess iron in the diet." Since d) is the only option that could have possibly been true at the time of the excrement, I assumed that my ability to produce green poop was a sign that this would be one of the greatest Thanksgiving breaks of all time.

I arrived at Fattell's place that afternoon (who knows what time - 5 or 5:30 or something) and then things started getting interesting. I got to see Fattell's shrine to Fresca, religious icons, and his cricket gear. Fattell's roommate was a cool dude, but they played some game called Killzone instead of Halo 2. I was pretty disappointed at the lack of the Halo, but it was OK. Killzone was basically more realistic than Halo, and there was a lot less splattering with vehicles. Anyway, we then went to Taco Bell and talked of the olden days, followed by a visit to the local Wal-Mart. That night, I watched some of Fattell's Corn Mo Show DVDs, then hit the sack under two of Fattell's recently-washed towels.

The next morning, I woke up WAY too early for my own happiness and Fattell drove me to the meeting point with the B. We threw everything into the B's car and got on the band bus and were off to the Local State University Rivalry! The Local State University Rivalry itself was pretty miserable, and wet as anything has ever been wet. We won, but just barely. Basically not enough to impress the voters in the two major college football polls. But still, we won. Then, the B and I rode the bus back to Birmingham and took it to the house, where I threw all of my stuff on the floor and, for the first time in months, got a good night's sleep.

Sunday was uninteresting.

Monday things started getting awesome. First, I woke up, as I often do to start my day. I worked on a government assignment, then went outside to see if my car would start. Alas, the Mateskobule would not start. For one thing, it was probably only driven about once a month. For another thing, which I was later to realize, someone had left the headlights on. So yeah, the battery was pretty much the most dead I've ever seen a car battery. My mom and I hooked up the jumper cables to her van, and we tried to charge it up, even leaving it running for fifteen minutes or so. But alas, it was to no avail, because it refused to be charged. So we started it up and I drove it over to Auto Zone, where they took out the battery and tried to charge it up themselves. Even there it didn't work. But it did start up enough times to get me to school.

Once I arrived at school, I went to the front desk to get one of those cool little visitor passes that they give to people who aren't really supposed to be there. Piro was working the desk, so I told her I wanted to go see the Tarter. Then, without a word, she pointed at a little notice taped to the desk. It read something like as follows: "Former students cannot visit teachers during class." So, this seemed to be a dilemma. Luckily, a bright idea hit my brain. "How about I go to a teacher that isn't having class?" I asked Piro. She said all right and found Mr. Thornton. I said cool and went down to visit Allison. I saw her and Anderson and Thornton and some other band kids, then decided to go take a test in Tarter's class.

But as I turned the corner to head down the hall, lo and behold Hodges and a police officer were standing in the hall. Now, I knew I wasn't supposed to be there, and they knew I wasn't supposed to be there. They knew because of three giveaways: the Goodyear hat I was wearing (students aren't allowed to wear hats), the "Bee a Teacher" shirt I was wearing (what student wears shirts about being a teacher?), and the Bob Jones Visitor Pass prominently displayed in the middle of my shirt. So anyway, Hodges asks me, "Son, where are you going?" "To visit Ms. Tarter," I reply. Then he basically told me that no, I was not going to visit Tarter, because she had class. The gays! So I had to sit around the band hall until school ended. After hanging out with Tarter and saying hi to Boggs, I made a triumphant return to the world of Bob Jones scholars' bowl practice. There were a great deal of new players, which was encouraging. Robert yelled the whole time and cursed at people, which made accomplishing anything nearly impossible, but at the same time boosted the entertainment factor of practice exponentially (the exponent was e). I did moderately well, with a 18/21 ratio or something. Santi and Cameron beat me, but hey, it had been about six months since I had last held a buzzer.

After practice Cameron, Robert, DotCom, and I all went to Taco Bell, an after-scholars' bowl practice tradition which I grew fond in my years on the team. There was of course a lot of laughs had, Robert won some burritos on the drop-a-coin-onto-the-platform game, and the Chivers was even working. A quick aside on the Chivers - "the Chivers clan," as I am wont to call them, is a group of approximately three boys and one girl who are the greatest soccer-playing family in the known Madisonian area. I have even heard a piece of Madison lore, interspersed among normal conversation, that "if you plant a soccer ball in the ground, a Chivers will eventually spring up." Apparently that is how they are born. So anyway, after Taco Bell, Mom came to school to help me jump my car and take it back to Auto Zone, where they installed a new battery (which starts up brilliantly every time, might I add). Lastly came a search at Wal-Greens (unsuccessful) and Kroger (successful) for a posterboard for a project my brother had to do that night. Then, to the house for the sleep!

Tuesday morning I awoke to watch some Jeopardy. After Jeopardy, it was off to the thrift stores! At Asbury Thrift, I managed to get a really awesome Kawasaki keyboard for $8, Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke for $0.50, and the first three Alien movies for $6 total. Alas though, for they didn't have any good T-shirts! In fact, they hardly had any T-shirts at all. I was seriously disappointed. So anyway, next I went to the thrift store formerly known as "The Brook," which is now under new ownership as "the Thrift Shoppe." The guy at the desk, who said he didn't really work there but was just painting the back rooms, told me about the switch in ownership. They didn't have any good T-shirts any more either. So I got some book with The Misanthrope by Moliere, a play by Shakespeare, and some other works of literature for $0.50.

I then went to see a friend who was home-ridden with a broken ankle. Her mom was there and the both of them are pretty awesome. Then, another scholars' bowl practice, sans Cameron or DotCom or Robert or any coolness. But Santi was there, and he beat me. Everyone is becoming an expert on all the fine arts stuff I used to have an exclusive monopoly on, so basically I am not the awesomes that I once was. That night, a huge Halo 2 party went down, and I was totally there. When I showed up there weren't any spots open for me to play on, so I just rocked out hard on my new keyboard. In fact, that's what the night basically ended up as: me having a blast playing Halo and rocking out hardcorestyle on my keyboard at the same time. Then I went home.

The next day I put on my University's decal on the back of the Mateskobule, right next to the two for the Universities of the former two owners of the car. It's a nice little tradition that I decided to start. Hopefully the car will survive long enough for a few more decals to get applied. Then of course, the Jeopardy for the morning. I ended up helping the effort to clean up the house for the arrival of my grandmother that weekend. I also did some work documenting what was on the 8 millimeter and VHS tapes, but ended up not transferring the stuff onto the VHSs that afternoon. That night we had some awesome lasagna for dinner that was simply incredible. Then things started getting crazy. At about 8:15 I arrived at Taco Bell, where Fattell and Cameron were. We did a bunch of hanging out in the Taco Bell, then took it to Wal-Greens to walk around. Next, we headed to Wal-Mart, where we hung out in the toy section, got some 20 ounce Dews, and played us some Crrrrrraaaaaaaaazy Taxi! Then it was back to Taco Bell for some rocking out on the keyboard. Fattell drove around the Bell a few times, then we all said adieu and went home.

Thanksgiving itself (Thursday, for any of you non-Americans reading this story) was A-OK. Good food, good company with the cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents (and also some random people that aren't even related), and also the end of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Temple of Doom is the worst of the three Indiana Jones movies, but I have now realized that it is still pretty dang good. Well, after we came home from the Family Thanksgivingtime, I finally switched over all the home footage on the 8mm tapes to the VHS tapes, and now have them consolidated onto two tapes that I can play in anyone's VCR at any time. Unfortunately, in order to secure the TV for that long (I had to actually sit through the videos that I was transferring), I had to do it late at night; I ended up getting to sleep at 1:30 AM. But it was well-worth it since I accomplished what I'd meant to.

Friday included even more family hangout time. That morning, my family and I all got in the Club Wagon and went to the tree farm to pick out our Christmas tree. This year was the shortest time we've ever spent looking for the right tree, so I was happy about that. One thing to comment upon, however. At the front of the farm were reindeer - and there were bananas to feed them! Since when do reindeer eat bananas? It must be whenever they fly their top-secret fighter jets down to Cuba to help Castro plot his eventual domination of the Western Hemisphere. Anyway, shortly after we arrived home with the tree, my grandmother showed up at our house. We played one of the best games of UpWords that we have ever accomplished. And she almost won, too. 'Twas close.

Most of that afternoon was taken up sitting around with my grandmother talking about life and such. That night we all went to the movies. The girls saw Christmas with the Kranks; the guys and my grandmother, National Treasure. National Treasure was basically an awesome movie. When walking out of the theatre, I heard some random stranger liken the movie to the Indiana Jones series, which is a fair comparison. Except that where Indiana Jones had Nazis and religious artifacts, National Treasure has the Freemasons and old-school documents like the Declaration of Independence. And in place of Harrison Ford as Leading Rockaholic is Nicholas Cage. If you take out Cage's character's whiny sidekick and the unbelievable character of his National-Archives-director-turned-fellow-criminal girlfriend, it's a pretty good movie. Even the bad guy (who is Boromir - pure awesome) turns out to be a reasonable person for the most part. I found it extremely relieving that the movie's writers didn't turn him into simply a "villain." So that was the movie. The best part of the movie was something that came before, however: a teaser trailer for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. I pumped my fists in the air when I first saw it because I was so pumped about this movie. It is going to rock hard and that is all that I can say at the moment. The next half-year is going to be one big lead-in to the premier on May 6, 2005.

Saturday morning meant the traditional pancake breakfast, then driving to Texaco to lead Robert to the Diplomacy showdown spot. Diplomacy was awesome. Robert and I formed Team Suck and initially split up Europe into two halves. He was France, and I was Germany. We decided I'd take east Europe, he could have the west, and at the end we'd duke it out for first place. Didn't work so well, however. Robert got his butt kicked by Italy, and I didn't get anywhere fighting the British troops on the continent. But eventually we struggled back and I pulled off second place. The other Robert got first place with Turkey (he pretty much won on the first turn). After Diplomacy, it was off to visit Allison (who has a nice new TV) and the two Lauras (at their respective houses). Then to Robert's for Halo 2 (which was the stink, because the team's were way unfair - Robert/Cameron/George v. Myself/Linc/Harris. Then back to the house, where I did some packing for going home on Sunday. Then the sleep.

Sunday morning I went to church, then to the house of a geometry teacher at my high school who lives in my neighborhood for lunch (which was excellent). Then the B showed up around 4:15 or so and we threw everything in the car and returned to Auburn.

It was a good break. Maybe not as crazy as I would have liked (considering that there was no cap gun raid as had been previously discussed), but it was still pretty good. Not as good as the green poop seemed to indicate, however. I guess green poop can henceforth be taken as an omen of mediocrity.