i'll never go hungry again

ugh so full. i'm not complaining, just stating.

thanksgiving dinner was oaken and comfortable, and flouting the squish and squash of hk, it was of all things spacious! kate's flat is gorgeous. it manages stately and exotic and comfortable at once. the old wood chests and spanish tiles provide a perfect background for the cats. the cats really bring you home...especially the orange tabby attention whore. i love attention whore cats even more than i love fat cats (and i like fat cats more than chocolate).

with only two days notice, we managed to put together quite the respectable shindig. brian got up at 5 am to roast the five chickens that were to be his contribution (he did it using two gas burners and a microwave!--the man is a banker!). marcus brought the wines (he's an importer/exporter of...well, wine). i only ended up bringing 2 pies (they messed up my order)--apple and pecan (i know! they forgot the pun'kin!!), but the pecan was a big hit (with ice cream, fruit rollups, and orange icing--hehe, i'm such a kid, but mostly, i was just excited to have found these things in asia). and various other people provided: mashed potatoes, mashed yams, two types of salad (with goat cheeses and apples and other sophisticated things you'd put in salads), lots of cheeses and olives, stuffed portabello mushrooms (brought by the lone vegetarian for the lone vegetarian), broccoli, carrots with...parsley?, cranberry sauce!, stuffing (but we forgot to serve it), gravy baby, gravy.

we went around in a big circle and said the things for which we were thankful, and two big themes seemed to be personal sovereignty and babies. i talked to the only non-frisbee person there about physics and felt incredibly geeky and incredibly at home. they heckled me all night for calling people off alcohol duties. i'm ok with that, and refused their jaegermeister shots with a prim smile. later, i fell asleep on the couch.

eating lots brings dreaming. i dreamt that i was still in perth, and the ocean was so comfortable and effortless that i forgot which way was shore. the stars were out in such incredible force that i couldn't distinguish city from sea, making me feel vaguely turtlish. eventually i gained land by listening for big city noises, and there found a monkey (who was secretly kate's orange tabby). the monkey told me he liked me best because i have either the best or the third best survival instincts of the whole group, but before i could question who had the second best (i suspected yelena), i was standing on the endzone line of a field , playing disc with smite against a bunch of skinny indian boys (dot not feather), except my team was interspersed amongst the other team in the endzone much the way that the aliens are arranged in space invaders, so there was no where to cut, and indeed no one was trying to cut. to complicate matters, the field seemed to be in the middle of a sandy classroom--the ground was sand, but there were walls and randomly placed desks (a row of which, incidentally, blocked any io options to the first row of friends and foes in the endzone). i ended up throwing a blade to the back of the endzone at stall 3. i didn't see specific faces, but dorphne and erikas were definitely there. probably cchu, darlene, and yelena too.