Thanksgiving Musings: The Bird is the word

Today we devour a bird and spend most of the day/evening recovering from that action. This brings up some memories and an opportunity to tell everybody what you're thankful for. When I lived in NYC, I had become known as the guy who deep fries turkeys. Out in suburbia or anywhere you might see a deer hanging from the rafters of a garage, having a turkey deep frier is fairly popular. There is a burner with a propane tank attached that you put out on your patio or in the garage. Propane is a no no for the indoors. Anyway, my brother in law had a frier and one Thanksgiving maybe 12 years ago, he brought it to my Dad's and we fried a turkey. Five gallons of oil in the pot, then when you hit 350 degrees drop that bird in and in 45 minutes you're eating. Let me just say I was a skeptic at first and not really a fan of deep fried anything, but this method is the shit.
I've never had anything like it, and when I moved to NYC in 1999, I brought my own frier with me. For the next 5 years we had many parties on Broadway in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on our little back deck in the biggest city in the world, and frying those turkeys was the highlight. We marinated, we basted, we tried so many flavors. And city people went nuts. Many had never seen anything like it. The birds were gone in minutes, vegetarians faltered, relationships were started, cops were called....it was madness. Madness and delight.
Today, we live in a third floor flat in San Francisco and the frier is buried in the garage somewhere. Sometimes when I'm in there putting another box of books in storage, I hear it cry out for me. Someday, it will make its return.

There are so many things to be thankful for this year. I might have solved my headache problem with my ear surgery this past January, we got a car so I never have to ride the bus,we've travelled to some beautiful places in and around the bay area, we live in a very clean and happy neighborhood..I discovered the world of podcasting...but finding out we were having a baby recently is the thing I'm most thankful for. That and having Pamela around to share it with me. What a year 2006 will be. We're thankful for our friends and family and all of the well wishes we've recieved this past year as well

Here's hoping you'll be be the victim of tryptophan somewhere today, maybe watching a turkey fry on a back deck...cmon you know you want to.