home for an island

Sometime towards the end of last week my grandmother had a stroke. Initially it didn't sound so bad but my mom told me later that it hit the part of her brain that controls her memories and that she didn't remember much of anything. She sort of knew her three oldest daughters (my mom is the oldest) but had some trouble with her youngest, Ana, and yesterday couldn't come up with my Dad's name. I think my mom is doing her best not to be upset but I know she is. We're not sure what's going to happen when Grandma gets out of the hospital but it doesn't sound like she is going to be able to live on her own anymore.

Laura's big birthday party was on Saturday night at the Pour House. A bunch of people cycled in and out over the course of the evening and everyone who stayed had a good time and drank a bunch.

The next morning Shannon and I were supposed to compete in breakfast olympics (my chocolate chip pancakes against her french toast) but she was too hung over to do anything but lie in bed so Drew and I ate some pancakes and got coffee. We then spend a good amount of time wrestling with a 13 pound frozen turkey in a giant bowl of hot water. It had been defrosting for three days but was still largely frozen and we were hosting a Thanksgiving dinner that afternoon / evening. After both of our moms told us that we could potentially kill everyone at our dinner party (and after getting soaked with warm turkey juice) we decided to get a fresh turkey from Stop and Shop and roll with that guy.

Turkey cooking proceeded without a hitch after that and was probably lubricated by Beth's new drink concoction, Breakfast Champagne. It is a half and half mixture of High Life and Orange Juice; it sounds gross but it's very refreshing. Over the course of the day we went through about 30 High Lifes making these things for about a dozen people.

My dad sent me a really nice article about one of my favorite soccer players, Frankie Hejduk. He scored one of Columbus's three goals in their 3-1 victory over the Red Bulls in yesterday's MLS final.