Belated Thanksgiving Celebration

Tonight, my friends and I celebrated Thanksgiving with a feast fit for kings. We had turkey, stuffing (delicious cornbread stuffing), spiced-to-perfection yams, garlicky garlic garrrrrlic mashed potatoes, a fresh Asian salad, homemade cranberry sauce, taro bread, gravy, corn and pies. Two pies--one chocolate rum pie (yum!) and one pumpkin pie. And margaritas. And wine. And whipped cream. It was an extravagant and indulgent evening :) We also watched Love/Actually with dessert and made it into a perfect girls' night. Here are some photos and a video. There is a picture of all of us with my head cut off--but I kind of like it.







Today I also went to the campus pool to practice for my Scientific Diving Swim Test I have on Wednesday. It requires a 400m swim in under ten minutes, a 25m underwater swim with no push off, ten minutes of treading water, the last two with no arms, and all the dive skills. I realized that while I love to swim and I can swim all day if need be, I am not a graceful swimmer... I can't breathe right, I sputter and zig zag, I flail around--more like a mollusc than a fish. But hopefully they won't take points off for lack of elegance in the water...

I didn't get much work done today and my weekend is almost over! But I was recovering from a vicious cold (which I suspect may have been the flu) that I am not fully cured of. And I was also enjoying myself (which is necessary every once and a while to maintain some semblance of sanity). Tomorrow I am going to hunker down and do my paper. Ahh! So much to do in so little time! Two weeks, two 20 page reports, two 20 page finals, two presentations, a swim test, four labs to teach, 40 papers to grade--how will it all get done?! Whew--deep breath. Somehow, I will make it to Christmas.