Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Right now I’m sitting in the San Francisco airport waiting for my parent’s flight to arrive. I flew up from LA this morning, taking an early flight to save some money, so I have a few hours to kill. Two firsts for me today – first time flying Jet Blue and first time flying out of the Long Beach airport. Since I live in northern Orange County the LGB is much more convenient than LAX, and I had heard that it’s much less stressful to fly out of. It only took me about fifteen minutes to get from home to the airport this morning so I really appreciated that. Unfortunately it’s generally more expensive to fly from Long Beach since it’s fairly small (I didn’t realize just how small until today) and not many airlines have flights out of there. Jet Blue definitely has the most, and they had the cheapest flights from LA to San Francisco on Thanksgiving Day, so that’s what I chose. A lot of my co-workers loved flying Jet Blue to DC when we were going there once a month so I was excited to give them a try today. Not that you can learn much about an airline on a flight that’s only slightly more than an hour long, but I did enjoy it! The in-seat DirecTV was nice since I get bored easily on planes, and I got to watch part of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade since the NBC feed was from the East Coast. I still set my DVR to record the parade so I can watch it when I get back home on Sunday. I hate to admit it, but right now going back home, crawling in bed, and watching the parade sounds wonderful. When my alarm went off this morning, two hours before my 7 AM flight, I was so not ready to get up. Someone in Seal Beach threw a raucous party last night and I had a hard time sleeping as a result. But at 5 AM I had to get up, make myself pretty, throw the rest of my stuff into my suitcase, and head to the airport. Included in my “stuff” is four Tupperware containers full of cookies – pretty much the only thing I could make ahead of time and transport in my suitcase to contribute to Thanksgiving dinner. I’ll write a whole other post about my Thanksgiving baking, but for now I’ll just say that I tried four new chocolate chip cookie recipes this week! They are all really different, and one of them doesn’t actually have any chocolate chips in it, but I’m still wondering if I went a little overboard. Too late to second guess that now! For my dad who is eating low carb these days I made two batches of roasted nuts yesterday – Indian-spiced almonds (my apartment still smelled like curry this morning) and rosemary pecans. I only tried a few of them after they came out of the oven, but I thought they tasted pretty good. I know there will be much better things to eat at dinner tonight, but at least I contributed something.
Thanksgiving week is always a little strange with a holiday in the middle of the week, and this year was no exception. You know how I said I got so much done at work on Tuesday and how Wednesday was going to be even better? Well, I didn’t even make it in to work yesterday. I was so exhausted when I went to bed on Tuesday night that I forgot to set an alarm, so I seriously overslept. By the time I had roused myself I figured it wasn’t worth going to work since I was planning to leave early anyway. Hopefully I didn’t miss anything important! I wish I could say that I used my free time welly yesterday, but I’m afraid I was mostly just lazy. Besides packing my suitcase, roasting the almonds and pecans, and washing some dishes, I sent most of the day bumming around. I definitely haven’t been getting enough sleep recently and that’s been wearing me down. I fell asleep on the couch last night for a couple of hours, and by the time I woke up it was too late for me to go running. I feel like such a slug for not getting any real since Sunday, but I’ve been so tired. For all you ladies out there you’ll understand when I say I blame my hormones. Hopefully I’ll get back into the groove soon. I brought my running shoes with me to San Francisco and I’m planning to make use of the hotel fitness center as much as possible while I’m here. I always eat really well when I’m on vacation so I’ll definitely have to get some running in! This is the time of year that it’s the most difficult to stay in shape. Everyone is busy with holiday preparations which leaves much less time than usual for things like exercise and relaxation. It doesn’t help that I promised my co-workers a cake on Monday. That’s a story for another post, but I should use some of the time I’m just sitting here at the airport to look for a recipe to try. I love free airport wifi! But getting back to the holidays, I am fortunate to have finished almost all of my Christmas shopping already. I have one or two small items I still need to get, but I’ve got a little more than three weeks before I fly to Tallahassee for Christmas. That’s plenty of time to complete my holiday errands and still have time leftover for running. No more excuses!
OK, I think it’s about time for me to go find my suitcase (which has inevitable been taken off the baggage carousel and stashed somewhere for me to hunt for) and make my way to the terminal where my parent’s flight will arrive. Happy Turkey Day, everyone! I hope you all are having a lovely day, eating delicious food, and passing out on the couch afterwards to watch football or the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special or something like that. Since I’m spending the weekend with my family I don’t know how much time I’ll have to write in the next three days, but I’ll do my best to limit photo-only posts. No promises, though! (I guarantee I’ll have at least one picture of food to share. I’m a foodie at heart.) Happy Thanksgiving!
