Ready for the arrival of Clan Howdy

This may be my last post until after Thanksgiving, so I'll make sure you get your bandwidth's worth...

This afternoon, the patriarch of Clan Howdy, my father-in-law, a man known in the oil fields as "Red", will be arriving.  He is followed every day by more members of the clan until the bedrooms are busting with caber-tossing, grog-swilling relatives¹.  We are turkeying on Sunday and the last of them clears out on Tuesday.  Tuesday night, the prodigal daughter arrives home from college and we leave Wednesday for Austin and more eating with my father and stepmother.  I am tired already.

I have bought more food than I think is humanly possible to consume.  Wanna hear a funny story?  It may not translate well to print, but here goes...

I went to grocery store number one and bought $50ish of groceries so I could score a free turkey.  Free turkey and other groceries waited in the back of my car (a Honda Pilot) while I finished my shopping in grocery store number two.  I pushed my bloated cart out to my car and pushed the button on the keychain to unlock the hatch.  I opened the hatch and there were two folding camp chairs and a man in the driver's seat in the car.

My first thought was...where are my groceries?
My second thought was...how did my key open this guy's car?

The guy in question turned around at this point and said, "ummm, you have the wrong car."  If I'd had any presence of mind at all, I'd have made a smart remark about how at least I was putting stuff into the car instead of taking stuff out of it, but instead I babbled sorrysomething and shut the hatch.

I did a 180º and there was my car (same make, model, color and even dirt) directly behind me.

I am sure my observant readers have never done anything like this, right?  Howdy nearly fell of his chair at dinner last night when I related this ignominy to him.

However, he redeemed himself by hanging up my framing project...

This project was a cinch thanks to Casey's comments from a couple of days ago.  Some of my readers were dismayed that I wasn't going to be wearing these socks, but really, I know once they are worn, they will never look this good again, and really, I have a lot of socks already.  Besides, what an innocent way to brag!  An aside to Pat:  thanks for letting me know about the fading, these are hung in a hallway that never gets any sunlight, so maybe they'll last awhile!

Socks are, from left to right, Prism socks (LL rainbow and Regia solid navy) River Rapids socks (LL sport River) and Lacy Scallops socks (Koigu).  The links for the last two are over on the right.

I was sitting down to blog this morning and noticed the ducks on the pond exhibiting a weird, cultish behavior...

These ducks had made a mosh pit!²  They were bobbing up and down and swimming around in a clockwise circle around each other!  You can see other ducks swimming over to join in the fun!  Bizarre.  These are Northern Shovelers, maybe that makes a difference, I'm no Marlin Perkins.³

I have to brag for a minute.  I was going to keep daughter Squiggy out of school tomorrow, since the first of her cousins arrives 10AMish.  She gets into the car yesterday after school and gloomily says, "I guess I'll have to go to school tomorrow after all, I have three quizzes."  You gotta love a kid who knows when she's gotta buckle down and get something done...totally unlike me, who should be cleaning the refrigerator right now, instead of wasting time blogging...wait!  I am amusing you, right?  I'm not wasting time!  Phew, a little justification goes a long ways around the Sockbug house!

If I don't blog again before it, have a very happy Thanksgiving!  And if you're in a place where it's not celebrated, have a marvelous 24th of November!  May your mosh pit be filled with those you love!

¹  Who I love dearly and am happy to host.  Really.
²  If you go to Wikipedia for this entry, make sure you scroll down to the moshing precautions, they are hysterical!
³  I bet most of you aren't old enough to know who Marlin is.  If you are, I bet you can remember the Mutual of Omaha theme song (*and* I bet you'll be singing it all day now, thanks to me!)  I met Marlin's nephew, Ron Perkins, once.  He told me he'd been on the show once as a kid.  Just so you don't think I'm preoccupied with Marlin, with a semi-common last name like Perkins, it didn't occur to me to ask him if he was related to the TV guy, he just volunteered it.

Gosh, between the length of this entry and the fact that it has footnotes, I bet you feel like you are reading a frigging book!  The good news is that I've cut my parentheses usage by 50%!!