No leftovers?! I got screwed.

All in all, Thanksgiving in Portland, Part II, shaped up pretty well. The drive didn’t take any longer than it usually does. Political debates at the dinner table were curtailed before anyone could get killed or emotionally scarred (for reference, the split in my nuclear family is Bush 4, Kerry 3). My older brother, Rob, defended his company’s flagship product, Adderall, against my charges that crushing and snorting it gives one all the pleasant effects of bathtub speed without the rough comedown (so I hear, so I hear). We ate three kinds of pie, and I got a turkey drumstick to myself and felt like a medieval duke. Disappointingly, I was never afforded an opportunity to shout, “You ruined Thanksgiving!” at anyone. It’s funnier when it’s not actually Thanksgiving and no one ruined it, I suppose. But still.

Rob’s daughter Allison continues to do endearing baby-ish things, like yammering away in her nonsense language and trying to ride the dog. Rob dressed her up in a baby-gown covered in glitter for the occasion, and the sparkly stuff rubbed off on everything she touched. By the end of the night we were all covered in glitter from playing with her – I even had it in my beard. We looked like the cast of an off-Broadway production of Peter Pan.

Oh, and Rob’s house is haunted. Three times now they’ve heard footsteps that walk down the hallway and open the door to the baby’s room (which has a tell-tale “click” from a faulty knob), only to rush out and find the hallway empty and the baby’s door closed. Apparently, these visitations started when Allison was born. My suggestion that she has The Shine was quickly shouted down, but seriously, how cool would that be?

On Friday night, most of the family drove to Tigard to meet my older sister Jenn’s boyfriend Kirby’s family. My family, especially Jenn, has been known to get competitive when playing board games, so I was a little worried when I learned that the plan for the evening was an eleven-person game of Pictionary. Jenn and I wanted to be on a team so that we could dominate – we have this mind-meld thing going on when it comes to games, the most infamous example being when she drew a circle and I correctly guessed the clue “Bay of Pigs” – but it was not to be so. We drew numbers from a hat to determine teams, and I was allied with Kirby’s 20-year-old sister, Holly, and his dad. Jenn got stuck with my mom and Kirby, who, to spare feelings, are not the most adept players in the group. Kirby’s family has unique rules for the game, where every clue is an “all-play”, so that every team races to be the first to draw and guess on every roll of the die. Needless to say, it was intense – after the rolling team shouted “Go!”, the area around the kitchen table exploded into deafening yells as we guessed, “Line! Box! Flag! Hat! Billiard cue!” and so on. Holly and I turned out to have good Pictionary-repoire, and together we outstripped the other groups by over half the board to win. More importantly, after the game Kirby’s mom gave us no fewer than seven jars of homemade jam to take home, two of which now reside in my fridge. I do dearly love jam, and I thank her kindly for the gift.

About the only thing I didn’t do in Portland was any of the homework I brought with me – but then, that’s what Sunday night is for. No sense breaking with tradition.