Thanks, the giving of (mostly cribbed from the email to Dad)

I had an enjoyable, although slightly wacky Thanksgiving. I am dogsitting for my aunt this weekend while she and her family gallivant off to Arizona to spend the holiday with one of Guide Dog Uncle's innumerable brothers.

Thursday morning, I enjoyed a nice leisurely bath in the sybaritic tub. My book did not get much wet. Later on, I packed up the dogs and dropped by JD and Ryan's place en route to the Thanksgiving dinner that gushi was throwing. I couldn't very well leave the dogs on their own for the length of a proper Thanksgiving dinner and attendant festivities, and JD doesn't like dogs. So I made a flying visit, and greeted maiden, who was spending Thanksgiving there, and she got to say hello to the dogs. She particularly likes poodles, so she was happy to meet Dazzle.

Then we drove off to Redwood City, which was where gushi was holding his party (at his workplace). I observe in passing that my aunt has her dogs trained very nicely, and they come with alacrity when called, which is very useful when you are holding the leash of one and the other has decided to hop out of the car because the arthritic lab is getting out too slowly, and start darting across the road. Fortunately there was no traffic. The current dog bribe is cubes of cooked turkey burger.

Dinner was entertaining. I met a bunch of interesting people, and we showed each other horrible things on the internet. Gushi called me off to show me something interesting, and opened a server room door, and told me what I was looking at. I have now been in the same room with archive.org, which suitably impressed me. I conveyed Figment's thanks, which will be duly relayed.

Deacon was a bit barky. There was a good deal of shop talk, including security issues. One of the other guests joined me when walking the dogs, and we had a nice conversation about more general topics. We watched Addams Family Values, which I'd never seen before.

When I was headed out, the oil light came on. Fun! Ever mindful of the lessons imparted to me by my father, I pulled over immediately (about ten yards from where I'd been parked) and stripped off my velvet shirt in an attempt to save it. It was at this point that I realized that my seemingly-frivolous purchase of a solar-powered LED flashlight was in fact eminently practical, as there it was on my keychain (the tiny maglite runs out of battery so fast) and enabled me to find the impossible catch under my hood, and locate the dipstick, and locate the hole to return the dipstick to. I somehow managed to not get my fingers even smudged with oil, though I did reflexively then wipe them on my hips instead of the paper towel I'd carefully extracted from the trunk, which would have been bad news for the black velvet skirt.

I took a short nap, then picked up Tif for an observance of Black Friday.

Crossposted. comments.