I decided to start a new tradition for myself on Thanksgiving and volunteer to cook food for those less fortunate than myself. I had a nice day cooking and sending food out to people. Most of the volunteers were great even if they sometimes were intimidated by working in a large kitchen. One woman was so terrified by the giant steam kettle that she wouldn't go near it for fear of it suddenly toppling over and being scalded to death by 50 gallons of gravy.
After all the food was made and the kitchen scrubbed, some of the volunteers had a little dinner together and one guy even gave me a ride home. I had been up since 4:30 in the morning so I ate a little more turkey and fell asleep watching football. Not a bad day.
Friday, I ran a few errands early and went home for lunch. I do not hit the stores on "Black Friday" since celebrating the season of thanks should not be commemorated by trampling my fellow man so that I can get 25% off my Wii system.
By Friday afternoon, it was becoming more and more apparent that one of "those less fortunate" had passed on a horrifying stomach bug that had unleashed dark forces in my digestive tract. My immune system responded by expelling all visitors, friend or foe.
I went to the store and bought Tylenol, Gatorade and some Superfood hoping to at least remain hydrated but anything sweet just made it worse. It was water or nothing and I was gonna be stuck in the house for a few days. I settled in on the couch with a big bottle of water and the remote.
Normally, being stuck on the couch watching TV is not such a bad thing but I had failed to factor in that it was a Holiday weekend and programming had been changed. Channell 11 was running pledge drive programs. That's when they suspend airing the shows I like and show a marathon of shit until they get enough cash to return to regular programming. It's like they are holding Jim Lehrer hostage. MSNBC was showing a marathon of LOCKUP but I'd already seen most of them so I settled on college football.
I LIKE football but after Thursday, Friday and much of Saturday watching non-stop pummeling interupted only by trips to the can, I was getting kind of bored. I started watching Telemundo and other Spanish language programming even though I speak all of about a dozen words of the language. It was fun to try and interpret the dialogue and make a lot of it up myself. I think the fact that I was a little messed up on flu medicine really helped the effect.
There are greatly varying production values between Univision, Telemundo and Telefutura but one thing they all seem to embrace is a love of dubbing crappy 80's and 90's American films into Spanish. If you have never seen Mortal Combat: Annhilation, you should but only with the volume turned down and make up your own dialogue.
By Sunday, I was feeling a lot better and even got out to buy groceries. More football and a lte afternoon nap and I am back to 100%. It's been a long time since I've had a stay in weekend but I think I'll try to have one from now on every couple of months.
Happy Holidays!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Feel better.
Let's just hope those "stay in" weekends to come are under better circumstances.
In any event, cool about the Thanksgiving dinner... though not so much the Thanksgiving bug. Did you locate a kitchen via Chicago Cares?
Winter: I do, thanks.
3rd: I did not find it through Chicago Cares but rather Volunteer Chicago. I did a project with them at the Boys and Girls Club a few years back and it didn't go too well. I like what they do but they have a very small full time staff that tries to coordinate some pretty huge events.
Ole!
Post a Comment