I also baked a blueberry pie for Thanksgiving, and it came out great and did not burn! I didn't need to defrost my backup pie! Check me out! Yes, I am slowly learning how to cook things. And I am also learning that cooking sort of sucks, because even the most minor thing you cook takes a lot of time and planning, and generates about seven thousand dirty dishes.

I haven't quite gotten the knack of keeping up with the dishes, either. Last night I had "do dishes" on my schedule, since all of my Thanksgiving dishes are still in the sink. But there's no heat in that little part of the house, and it was too cold last night to stand around and stick my hands in cold soapy water and freeze--at least that's what I told myself.

I've learned that "wait until your boyfriend comes over and does dishes for you" is a viable strategy, but obviously I am going to run out of imaginative sexual favors eventually, and then where will we be?

The reason the dishes sat around for five days is that Tim was in town for Thanksgiving. And thinking back, it was kind of a disaster, although I am grateful that we are both alive (after driving through the ice and darkness) and that he is still my friend (after I made him play Bingo for like five hours).

You see, we had this dream. And the dream was to go to Reno. And being from Los Angeles and being used to driving to Las Vegas through a bleak, dry desert, it did not occur to us that the drive to Reno would take us over a mountain range. In the winter.

We refused to believe this would be a problem, even when we got to Sacramento and Ian (hereafter known as The Voice of Reason) suggested we might want to think about checking the weather. We were both very blase about it. "Oh, I'm sure it's fine," we said. "We shouldn't have a problem."

Yeah.

Cut to: an hour later. We started to see snow on the side of the road, first a little bit, and then a lot. (And we did take some time to appreciate that it was beautiful, which it was.)

We assured ourselves that it was "barely any" snow and it would "probably be fine." Then The Voice of Reason called to say that chains were being required close to the Nevada border, and that we should probably just turn back now, because we were basically screwed.

Did we turn around at this point? Why no. No we did not. And it took us two hours to drive the next twelve miles. And then we turned around. And by this time it was dark, freezing cold, the windows were fogging up, and there was still snow everywhere. If only someone had warned us that this would happen, eh?

We ended up, ironically enough, at the casino down the street from my house. Where we could have gone in the first place, a drive which would have taken us all of fifteen minutes. You know, I used to think of us as reasonably intelligent people, but our plan... not so much. Maybe not our finest hour.

To make ourselves feel better, we tried to pretend we were in Reno. And we sat down to play Hold 'Em. Real live playing-for-money poker.

As it turns out, I know when to hold them. I'm a little bit less clear on when to fold them. But my real problem is knowing when to walk away. Such as: when I am tired, tense, and am betting all my money on the imaginary cards that I think I have, but do not actually have. That's time to walk away. Or maybe even time to run.

Ultimately I lost almost $100, and Tim won a little over $100. So his poker skill was exactly inversely proportional to my fuck-ups, and as a team, we broke even. But we also had a lot of fun and I think I learned some things. Such as: if you have the best hand, bet your ass off. (I won a couple of pots that should have been bigger.) And don't overvalue smaller pocket pairs, especially when overcards come on the flop. (Depending on your poker knowledge, that sentence was either sexy or nonsensical.)

The next day, I made Tim come to a local Bingo hall to play Bingo with me, because that was the other thing I was really looking forward to in Reno. But Berkeley Bingo is not quite the same as Reno Bingo. It takes five times as long. And it's computerized. And we literally did not know what the hell was going on for the first hour we were there. We couldn't figure out what anything meant. What's a "Crazy Kite"? What's "Hard Way / Easy Way"? What's "Triple Triple Triple" or "Crazy T or L w/ 1 Wild #" or "Eight Pack Plus Diagonal"? And how do you work these machines? Where's my Bingo dauber, damnit?

We went into it thinking we'd be all ironic and funny with our lucky can of crab, and everyone there would be three hundred years old and have a collection of troll dolls, but actually the crowd wasn't quite so homogenous. It turns out we were not the youngest people in the room, but we were definitely the dumbest. We were so dumb that "dumb" was embarrassed to be seen with us. We needed two Bingo workers and three old ladies to explain things to us, and we still were confused. And we didn't win anything.

Now that I understand it, though, I kind of want to go back someday. I still do like Bingo, for some ungodly reason.

Also I should mention that I got to see Chiara (photo of me, Chiara, and our boobs is still in my camera) who was in town for Thanksgiving also! The three of us went out for crepes, talked politics, and shopped at the pirate store. And she gave me a gorgeous jewel-toned scarf that she knitted for me, because she is Chiara and she is awesome. (Oh hey look, she wrote about it, even. She did not emphasize her own awesomeness enough, I don't think. I LOVE CHIARA, YO.)

So now that Thanksgiving is over and the turkey is eaten (we went to two delightful Thanksgiving parties, one given by Joey and one given by La Wade) I guess it is officially holiday time. I am trying not to be too, too stressed but of course I have a ton to do this year, as every year.

The countdown to the annual Holiday Shindig is on; the party is in two weeks. And it is out of control. Last year we had a red dress and a chip tray that played the Mexican Hat Dance. The year before that we had a three-tier cheese tray. This year? We have a tent. And fifty guests for the sit-down dinner. And a waiting list.

A TENT. I cannot wait. (And even if I could wait, I'd probably have to put my name on the list first.)

Finally, the weather. I forgot to mention that the day we would have been coming home from Reno was a day that a huge (yooge) storm hit, and the Reno airport was closed, and we probably wouldn't have made it home at all. So thankfully we did eventually heed The Voice of Reason, or else we would have still been in Reno, trapped beneath a mountain of snow.

But in the meantime, it is cold here. Baby it's cold outside. But I talked to my father today and he said "put on your warm business and it will be all right, there." (Those were his exact words.) Today my "warm business" includes my scarf and my silver puffy jacket with white fluffies on it. And he's right, because I am definitely feeling all right, there.