Megan invited Kris and me over for Thanksgiving dinner. She knew we were orphaned this holiday, where "orphaned" is, of course, defined as too cheap to buy expensive tickets to visit our loved ones, opting to spend that money on flights to the Midwest for everyone to work on a house I bought instead. Or so I tell Kris.

I thought we'd have Mark and Megan, their parents, us, Doyle and Shirley, and maybe a couple of Mark's brothers. I was delightfully wrong, as we greeted Megan's parents, Mark's parents, Megan's sister (whom I had heard lots about, but only met in passing before), her significant other (who I've known for DECADES, but only after confirmed he was, indeed, more than 20 years old), all three Smith brothers of Kyle, Kevin, Matthew (who is now Matthew, and no longer Matty), both Smith grandmothers (though only one is actually a Smith), Mark's Dad's brother, his guest, his son and his significant other, a coworker of Mark's (another orphan), Kyle's Emily (who rocks, and hey, did you know she's beautiful in turkey dinner candlelight?), and Mirabelle (who slept thought much of the afternoon, and was the only person under 18 there (yay, Matty, er, Matthew).

I'm sure I'm missing a few others who were there, but that's just it: the living area was filled with three tables of people from four generations of Smith's. The house was filled with the smells of amazing food, and sounds of dozens of people talking in merriment. I can say that, because I sat at the children's table with Doyle and Shirley and Kris and Matty, er, Matthew, and Lucas and Kevin and Emily, with Kyle at the head of the table, and there was much merriment at our table.

After dinner, I wandered into Keith's office to work out a problem I've been gnawing on for a while now, from a personal site I've been working on. While I was working, many people came to visit with me, which was really cool, as I was able to catch up with them one-on-one in a quiet room instead of in a big crowd with lots of noise. Heather and Vinny and Vincent's mother showed up after dinner, with Heather being one of the people who came to visit with me. We talked for probably half an hour, which was about 25 minutes longer than any other conversation we've had. It was nice to finally talk to her, as we've been in the same social circle for years and never actually talked.

Rock Band started up about an hour after dinner, with the Smith Brother's Band rocking the house. Mark was on ocals, Kyle on drums and Kevin played guitar. Their first song brought down the house, with the entire family watching their musical exploits. Their second song was one that, well, Mark had never heard of, much less knew of, and, well, they failed that song. When they started back up again, Shirley grabbed the microphone as Mark's backup singer, and recovered their score.

The entire afternoon to evening to night event was wonderful and in some ways completely amazing. My family hasn't had the big family Thankgiving dinner since we stopped going to my aunt's house, many years ago. I miss that gathering and its festivities. I'm incredibly thankful that Megan and Mark let Kris and me share with their family's festivities.

I'm also amazed my kale dish was completely eaten. Even Mirabelle liked my cooked carrots. Of course, even brussel sprouts taste good with enough olive oil, garlic and balsamic vinegar, eh?

"I feel strange going out without my iPod."

"Why?"

"Because I count to four when I go to work: phone, wallet, keys, iPod. That's how I know I have everything."

"You count to four?"

"Yeah."

"That's it? Four?"

"What do you count to?"

"Wallet. Car keys. House keys. Office keys. Two phones. Two iPods. Two cameras."

"What?"

"Wait, I'm not done. Pack of kleenexes. Computer. Bag of wires. Airport Express..."

"Bag of wires? Why do you have a bag of wires?"

"Uh, two headsets, one phone-headset, USB cable, ethernet cable."

"You carry an ethernet cable with you to work?"

"Well, yeah. And an emergency supply of food, too. And lip balm. And vitamins. Oh, and a magazine. Maybe a book."

"To work. Every day?"

...

"Maybe I should take only one camera."

"Yeah."

No, it wasn't the first drink each of us had at 21. It wasn't moving in together. It wasn't the car we bought together, or even the house he mostly bought, er, we bought together. It wasn't getting married. No, none of these officially made us adults.

Now, buying a bed. THAT has made us adults.

On paper, it sounds like a fairly easy workout. One round into the four round set, we realized it wasn't an easy workout. By the end, my legs were shot.

Each round was:

20 single armed overhead weighted squats
10 turkish sit ups
10 weighted V ups
10 burpees
20 box jumps

For the single armed, overhead weighted squats, we held a weight above our head and, keeping the arm straight and weight up as high as we could, did a squat. The squats were off-center, which made them more challenging. My shoulder has been bothering me since the layout, so I managed fairly little weight on this task.

The turkish sit ups continued the straight arm overhead weight, but for this we went from standing straight up to lying down, all with the weight as high as we could make it vertically (which put it perpendicular to our body once we were lying down). We could go from a standing position to a squat, roll backwards to sit, put our feet out straight, then lie down, or we could go from a standing position to a lunge, put our unused hand down, pull the back leg forward and lie down. After the first exercise of squats, the lunges were the easier way to go.

The weighter V ups were with the same weight, starting lying down with both hands on the weight, which was overhead on the ground. Lifting both legs and shoulders into a V was one situp.

Burpees were the same.

Box jumps were either landing two feet on the box (gently!) or step ups. I did twenty each leg of one legged jump-ups onto the box, mostly to work on my vertical jump form.

Not sure if I'll go Friday or not. Breanne won't be teaching those classes.

When I was in fifth grade, my teacher expressed extreme disdain for the word got. Her dislike for the word was so intense, we spent an entire afternoon one day thinking of alternative words to use instead of got. As eleven year olds, we produced a large list. That list, however, was nowhere near as large as the one I've managed to compile in the subsequent two decades.

Why, just today, I received an email with the sentence,

"We just got a bunch of invoices, and need to match them up."

I read it as, "We just received a bunch of invoices, and need to match them to their requests."

Note the lack of "got" in that sentence. And the comma. I added the comma. And the dangling preposition? Gone.

I do that with just about every instance of "got" I come across. Although there are a lot floating around here, fewer than 40 of the 90 instances are actually from me. The rest are quotes from other people. Given how common "got" is in conversation, that's pretty good.

I wonder if I should start another section of gots, to go along with my license plates and letters, listing all my got replacements.

Hmmmm, you know, that might be too OC.

Even for me.