Random Rambles

Another Thanksgiving come and gone. I have plenty to be thankful for, but I don't like to talk about it much. My family is kind of like the Sacketts in the Louis L'Amour books. We are spread around some, and we don't see each other very often, but if someone needs help, relatives start showing up that may not have been seen in years. I have very few relatives with whom I can find a common ground anyway. To my actual family, who are used to me, they know that I'm not going to speak often, and when I do it will probably be a fairly off-the-wall observation, or perhaps a clarification with one of those pedantic little factoids that like to stick in my head. With in-laws it's different. Sometimes I think they see me as some sort of alien life form. I'm just agoraphobic enough not to truly enjoy traveling and visiting, unless I'm going to my dad's house, which is only about 4 miles away and I see him all the time anyway. His usual question is something like, "So...what's new in the world of guns?"

I think it was due to a small "Alphecca-lanche" that this week, for a couple of days, I was actually a small, hairy rat in the TTLB Ecosystem. I saved a screenshot for posterity.

The food is always good no matter where I go, no matter if it's at relatives or in-laws. The only unfortunate part is that my German in-laws don't seem to have assimilated as well as my German relations, because the in-laws never have tamales for the holidays. There are certain foods that the holidays just wouldn't be right without: turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and tamales. This may sound odd to people in northern climes, but in south Texas, tamales are standard holiday fare.

Back in the olden days, when Germans were coming to this country and settling in Texas, we brought polka music and the accordion. The people of Mexican ancestry who were already here thought this was some great music, so they got their own accordions and started playing polka, except they called it conjunto. In return, they gave us some great food, like tamales and enchiladas, and revealed to us the wonders of the jalapeno, habanero, and the ubiquitous chili petine. Personally, I think we got the better end of the deal.

P.S. I know there is supposed to be a tilde over the "n" in jalapeno. But if I put in the html code for that, Blogger will just mung it up and spit out some odd nonsense characters. So I'm just using a regular "n."