Food, Friends, and Bryan Adams

Since people have asked: things are looking up slightly for my roommate's health, and my supervisor has been in a holding pattern for a few weeks which has allowed her to prepare for surgery and all that follows. So the crises of a month ago are feeling less and less like crises, which is good. It's been a busy few weeks, and things are starting to ease up a bit.

This weekend I was vicariously living the joys of others. Two of my favorite people here had great things happen in the past few days: one defended her dissertation, and the other asked his girlfriend to marry him! So there is a lot of positive energy going around. I'm really enjoying their highs, remembering how good each of those things felt when I was living it.

I also had my own joys to celebrate last weekend, when I visited Seattle. Julia, Meredith, and Alison drove up from Eugene, and Jeff's old lab-mate Alicia lives in Seattle, and we all convened for Canadian Thanksgiving. Lots of pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes and yams, stuffing, and for those who cared there was also turkey :)

Our version of Thanksgiving involves friends, food, and karaoke:

That's us singing some Bryan Adams, to honor Canada. Without the Canadian karaoke, there is really nothing to separate Canadian Thanksgiving from the American one. So, somehow or another, it has become tradition that everyone must sing when we celebrate Canadian holidays, and amazingly, everyone just does. There is no protesting, none of the "oh, I really can't sing" nonsense, because for reasons I cannot fully understand, when Jeff asks people to sing, they do.

He also has a magical ability to get people to roller skate, play guitar hero and hula hoop on the wii, eat/drink gross things, and play silly kids' party games (can anyone say squeak piggy squeak?). Somehow, Jeff gets people to drop all their self-consciousness and pretension, and that is one of the things I love so much about him.

Which is one of the reasons why we are going here for Jeff's 30th birthday (just over a week from now). I can hardly wait!