Or is that "Goebbels, Goebbels ..."? Sometimes I get confused. These are pics from this morning's Thanksgiving Day Parade down on State Street in the loop. This thing starts awfully early in the morning (8am) and runs for 3 hours. We didn't get out of the house until it had already started, and, as the weather was "not bad" (it was 42° at 8am) it was very crowded, so we didn't get a "good" location. Daughter #1 spent most of it up on the base of a street light, and Daughter #2 and The Wife were wandering back and forth. I'd brought one of those fold-into-a-bag chairs with me, and was behind Daughter #1 most of the time (I told her to alert me when interesting stuff (the balloons, etc.) was coming so I could get up and snap a shot (the rest of the parade going by in random gaps between people in front of me).
While we appreciated that it wasn't sub-zero, or raining, or blizzarding, that 42° would have been a lot more pleasant had there not been a fairly substantial breeze running up the parade route. With the parade running from 8-11am, we all got cold pretty quickly. We were right by McDonalds, so we had washrooms and warmth available, but that was only accessed "as needed", and The Wife made a side trip over to Dearborn & Jackson to get The Girls hot chocolate from Dunkin Donuts.
After the parade, The Wife and The Girls opted to walk back (they had to get some last minute stuff at the store), while I hopped a bus and got my butt implanted on the couch about half-way through the first quarter of the Packers/Lions game (the majority of which I napped though). Definitely one of those "Can't they both lose?" games. Eventually everybody got started on various aspects of dinner (as noted, Daughter #2 and I did a number of things yesterday). Daughter #1 was doing a "fancy dessert" with chocolate cups (which turned out great), but was having an issue with the chocolate mousse to go in them (I suspect there was a certain amount of ignoring heat/cold levels on ingredients). I helped her out with that, and it ended up being about the right texture and quite tasty (but still not quite what we'd envisioned).
With it just being the four of us for holidays any more Thanksgiving is a whole lot of prep for a brief (but intense) meal, with folks flopped around the various couches and chairs before bedtime, with a feeling of having performed some required cultural ritual more than having "enjoyed" anything. Of course, things are so grim around here that any time The Wife and I are both around, we're "walking on eggshells" trying not to sink into angst and anguish about our financial situation. Who would have believed in May '09 that I'd be even less close to having a job than I was then? Sick, sad, and pretty damn sadistic if you want to deem any personality to the universe.
Anyway, bright and early (again) in the morning we're off to the Circus ... yet another company that ignored my job applications.