(Canadian) Thanksgiving

[dr_kromm]

Monday is the Canadian Thanksgiving Day holiday. I'm on an American schedule – because I work for a U.S. company – but I definitely took time to relax this weekend. And there's much to be thankful for . . .

First, I got to sleep in until noon today. I mean, seriously – noon. Even for the childless among us, that's an accomplishment.

Then Bonnie and I took advantage of a wonderful gift from our good friends E. & D.: a certificate for a couples massage. I've never had any kind of professional massage, so this was either jumping in with both feet or going in with my hand held. Either way, it was very relaxing. I'm not much for the whole New Age scented candles-and-chakras thing, but I'm definitely down for anything that does more good for my sore arm in one hour than about two months of everything else I've tried. So here's to getting aches and pains ironed out – I see more of this in my future. (For the locals, I would recommend Espace Nomad . . . they were polite, professional, unrushed, and very willing to explain things to a massage newbie.)

Our Thanksgiving dinner was unusual, as far as Thanksgiving dinners go. Instead of the customary stuffed bird, we put together two Welsh items. Katt pie is a kind of sweet-savory pasty filled with sweetened, spiced lamb and currants – it's just amazing stuff, and nothing at all like any kind of meat pie I've had before. Glamorgan sausages are rolled-up, fried-up treats made not with meat but with cheese, leeks, and breadcrumbs. Neither is "fancy" . . . I suspect that they're basic fair food or pub food of some variety. But with a good Chianti Classico and fresh veggies (and some totally excessive biscotti and calvados for dessert), they were just great. If all Welsh food is so tasty, then the slagging people give it is thoroughly undeserved.

Which is to say, I cannot complain. Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian friends out there! I hope your day is as good as mine.

Comments

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

The trick is "Don't stop playing games!" :) Most people who burn out on a hobby because it's also their work do so because they drop the hobby for being too much like work. If you power through that first few years of "Arrrrgh, my hobby has become work!" panic, it goes away. It's replaced by confidence that you're better at your hobby because you're a pro, and better at your work because you're taking extracurricular classes in what you do for a living.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Fortunately, having copy edited on the order of 400,000 pages of scholarly and scientific text has not made me stop enjoying reading scholarly and scientific writing. That would just be dismal. And writing GURPS books does not take away my enjoyment of playing and GMing. Now that I think of it, in fact, one of the things that makes both game writing and GMing fun is that it's such a good excuse to do research on unfamiliar topics.