Thanksgiving Turkey Trot

Busy week. Monday night we went to see Interpol at Terminal 5.

So didn't get to bed until late. Tuesday I had my 2nd week of speed sessions, 8 x 400m which I actually kind of enjoyed although it was really warm inside so I definitely need to go back to storage and take some shorter shorts out.
We were really busy with customer orders at work due to the various sales going on at the moment too.

Thursday was the start of Thanksgiving. I'm not sure if it just used to be Thursday but now includes Black Friday shopping, Thanksgiving weekend and then your Cyber Monday online shopping day!

I entered what will be my last race of 2014, the Prospect Park Track Club's annual Turkey Trot. A 5M trot of a lap and a half of Prospect Park.
A good price, a nearby start but really more so I could eat all the food later without feeling quite so guilty.

Can you guess what the race give-away was?

Weather was a windless couple of degrees and the start was at 9am so I tried to time it and jogged over around 8.40am. The start was actually a little further over through the Center Drive road than I thought so I ended up arriving at 8.57am and as they were starting in the direction I was entering from I stepped over the start line, turned around and 2 minutes later we were off!

The roadway is narrow so the other people turning up late had to wait to get past so they could start by crossing the timing chip mat.

I had a fast start, 6.12 then remembered that it was 5M's and not the 5K that I'm used to doing in this park.

 

So 6.39 along the bottom and then 6.55 including up the hill.
Once I crested the hill at Grand Army, I rolled up my sleeves, settled in to track a couple of other runners and did a 6.24 mile.

 Then with a strong finish I did another 6.12 through the line for a total time of 32.24, 32nd out of a decent field of 2279 and 3rd in my age group. A decent training session too when you add in the jog there and the jog home.

That made 22 races for the year which when I thought about it sounded a lot when you think that's a race every 2-3 weeks.
I'm also well over running 400 more miles than I did last year although I've only done half the amount of biking too!

Onto the food! Late afternoon we went round to Heather's cousins. They had a couple of friends round and everyone brought a couple of dishes round. Thanksgiving food is like our Christmas dinner so I had WAY too much food.

There was a spectacular ham, mushroom gratin, potatoes, sweet potatoes, vegetables, mac n cheese, chicken adobo & rice. Then obviously dessert consisted of a little of everything; ice cream, ginger cookie, sweet potato/pumpkin pie, lemon bar and of course some apple pie.
Haven't been so full for a long time.

I had to work Friday morning but luckily I am down in shipping so had minimal contact with the tonnes of customers that were swarming all over the store on Black Friday, I mean it's not like we sell tv's!

Winter update

Lots of small news items over the last few weeks.

I got my Permanent Resident Card (green card) a few days after the interview and acceptance letter arrived.

Just as the weather was getting a lot colder, Heather found a little kitten sitting shivering at the top of our street. So the whole "Don't be mad, but...." was the start of the first conversation we had later that day.
Rue is 50% cute and loveable and 50% a pain in the ass, running, jumping and biting everything. It took a couple of weeks for the other two cats to get anywhere near her or let her go anywhere near them. Slightly better now, she's just trying to play!
 

Yup, she did that.

Awww, but she's so cute

Like a small monkey on my back

Sleeping on my computer

Awww, look. They get along now... for the moment

Then we had Thanksgiving on the 28th November. It's a mega holiday here, especially on the food and shopping front. To me, an outsider, it's like Christmas without the presents.

We did the whole food thing. No turkey though, we went for a stuffed pork loin instead. I was on my own with the brussel sprouts though.

Then while I was in the mood, I stocked up on a couple of pre-Christmas goodies from the British store and another impulse buy.

Last week we had our works Christmas Party. As well as a tonne of mostly homemade food the budget was mainly blown on a large bouncy assault course castle. Not recommended AFTER you've just eaten all that food.

The cake house - 24 hours later

As of now, it's a little below zero and the snow has finally started falling!

My first Thanksgiving

Thursday November 22nd was my very first Thanksgiving here. I started the day at 9am with a couple of thousand runners doing a 5 Mile race in Prospect park, one of many "Turkey Trots" going on around the USA.

 
Then straight home, showered and we raced off to Grand Central Station where we took a Metro North train about 70 miles north to the Connecticut border where some of Heather's friends have a lakeside house and had invited some friends for dinner. By the way, $49 for two return tickets shows why the trains are used so much here too.

Due to the time of year and lack of foliage the journey was quite cool, being able to see some more American towns and scenery. Some of the roadside rocks reminded me of the Inverness to Aviemore drive.

We got picked up from the station. The town had a nice little clock that when I showed Steve, he said made it look like something from Back to the Future, ha ha.

Ball Pond lake was quite small with houses of varying sizes dotted all around.

Looking across to where the house was

We had a wander down the garden to the water and I took a panoramic photo showing their nice little jetty. I hope to be invited back there in the summer so I can make use of their canoe.

Heather and I had a wander along the road while the cooks were busy and some of the houses were quite ridiculously large and a few had their Christmas decorations up already.

Then back for the main event:

Most of the food is just like our Christmas meal. Turkey, stuffing, sweet potato but in some nice bourbon sauce, brussels sprouts etc. It was more the desserts that were a first for me, pecan pie and a sweet potato pie that was actually really nice.
The company was interesting. As the owner was Heather's piano teacher when she grew up in Hawaii, their friends were slightly older too. I'll have to wait for next year to take part in the traditional television viewing of the NFL Thanksgiving games as this crowd were more into theatre, ha ha. But everyone was super nice and as usual there is always someone eager to tell you about their Scottish ancestry, which normally happens to sound more like Ireland instead.
The tiring part was the train home, getting to sleep around 2am and then going in for work the next day which was the infamous shopping day Black Friday and was incredibly busy for a few hours.