Chapter 7, in which I learn what US turkey-day is all about

Down here, most people seem to get 2 days off to fondly recall that touching moment in North American history when friendly natives taught starving European explorers how to live off the land so that the grateful explorers would be able to eventually repay the favour by slaughtering virtually the entire native population and annexing their land. Because these 2 holidays conveniently make for a very long weekend, I had plans to visit my cousin David's family once last time before I returned to the Great White North. I took an Amtrak train to Sacramento on Wednesday and was picked up by David, Jane, Josie & Mikey.

After taking the minivan through a car-wash, all of us went to Jane's sister's place for Thanksgiving lunch on Thursday, where I demonstrated my prowess on the trampoline in their back yard. All present were suitably impressed, even after I divulged that had taken lessons last summer. Renata & I made plans to hang out with some of her friends on Saturday. Once we had supped, several of us went for a walk in the local park before David & Jane took Josie, Mikey, me & 2 other cousins back home.

After being subjected to much Disney propaganda on TV, we convinced Josie to play some board games with us. She had a chess set so I taught her how to play chess, Tony-style; all the pieces talk and have their own distinct personailities (except the pawns, who are like agent Smith from The Matrix). She seemed to enjoy the game a lot, even though I was ruthlessly crushing her. The game was made even more interesting by Mikey, who kept trying to snatch pieces off the board.

Friday was spent playing with Mikey & Josie, discussing various social issues with Jane & listening to David tell stories of the family from days gone by. I also taught David & Josie to play hangman, although they didn't seem to taken by it. Jane needed to get some work done on her car so we went out for lunch while it was being fixed up. There had been plans to visit lake Tahoe but the threat of rain skittled those.

On Saturday we went to Jane's sister Ruth's place for a photo shoot by her son Ricardo, who's a budding photographer. Among many others, he took some pictures of me with Renata, David, Mikey & Josie. After lunch, Renata & I headed off to her place, which makes the Geekhaus look clean by comparision. However, they did have a wireless LAN, which I made good use of. Renata, Matt, Dan & I went briefly explored a nearby botanical garden & watched a few episodes of the Animatrix before heading off to her friends' place for the night.

Once there, we sat around talking for a while before playing Balderdash, followed by a rowdy game that combined Charades, Pictionary, wordplay & Trivial Pursuit. Eventually we had to leave, although we did stop to check up on somebody's dog en route to Renata's place. This dog had, in addition to it's own room, it's own water-filtration system! Instead of going to sleep as we had plannned, we ended up having a late-night discussion about theoretical Physics.

Jane took Josie, Mikey & me out for dinner on Sunday, while David did some work at home. The next morning I went in to work with David & walked to the train station from there. No sooner had I made it to the station than it began raining. Fortunately, the rain had stopped by the time I got to Santa Clara.