I was able to take Wednesday off, as is my custom, but since I had rehearsal Tuesday night, I wasn't trying to drive up Tuesday afternoon/evening, but drove up Wednesday morning instead.  I think that should become the new tradition because driving to Austin in the morning is always easier than trying to get out of town on a weekday evening, plus the sun is behind me.  Mornings up, evenings back is best.

So, I got to have lunch with my folks on Wednesday, then go to the store with Dad for the last-minute grocery run, which included the apples for the apple pie I was planning to make.  This Thanksgiving I took on more responsibility for the meal than before (I've been helping for a while now), although since I wasn't really in charge of how the bird was cooked, or the timing of things, it really didn't feel like that much responsibility - I just did most of the labor, since Mom's arm is still not quite healed from the accident in July).  The pie thing was my idea, but I used a recipe from Food TV which called for lemon and orange zest...which sounds good, and was good, but the zest of "one lemon" and "one orange" was a bit overpowering.  I was less than pleased, but my folks loved it, so there you go.  I think they like citrus more than I do.  So yeah, Thanksgiving itself came and went as usual.  Dad and I got our traditional walk-to-build-up-the-appetite in, although in my case it now just a special case of my daily routine.

Friday I went fishing, evening though it was very cold - I just bundled the heck up, figuring it would be good practice for some future trip up north.  I ended up catching the biggest fish I've ever caught out of the San Gabriel, and maybe the biggest fish I've ever caught period, and I feel like a damn fool because I forgot that I had my cell phone on me and could have taken a picture before I let her go.  Blah.  Anyway, it was probably a good four or five pound bass.  I don't carry scales with me, maybe I should.  After the summer flooding and long period of discharge from Lake Georgetown, I think the only fish left in that section of the river are the big ones.  I caught several large fish that day, and it was great.

I came back Saturday so that I could sing the Antiphon from Five Mystical Songs by RVW on Sunday, and as it turns out, so that I could swing by IAH and pick up my friend Dan, and then have the pleasure of going to Lucky Burger and getting burgers and fries and shrimp fried rice and wolfing that down at my place and drinking wine while we listened to Patton Oswalt rant about any number of things.  Dan described the experience as "beautiful".

Yesterday I slogged my way up 45 to go to Fry's and get myself my self-Christmas present early - a yoke-and-pedals system from Saitek, to help satisfy my flightsimming jones.  I'm definitely glad I got it, simply because learning the hand-eye-foot coordination is going to take some time, and that means I'll that much more ahead of the curve once I start real flight training (assuming, fairly safely, that what I'll be training will have a yoke and not a center or side stick).  It does also make hand-flying a lot more enjoyable, since fine elevator control is just easier with two hands pushing and pulling instead of one.  Maybe in a few months I'll spring for an extra throttle quadrant so I can have multi-engine fun.

Well, that about wraps it up.  I hope everybody else had a good holiday.  Now it's time for me to get through the holiday singing season (which for me is nicely front-loaded, I'll be done with the hard stuff by December 2nd) and start planning some things for the new year.