A Digital-Era Thanksgiving | November 21st, 2011
8:45 a.m.: Awake to my smartphone’s hella annoying alarm ring. Stare at it cockeyed and fumble with it until I manage to drag the screen to “Snooze”.
9:28 a.m.: Roll out of bed. Stub my toe.
9:43 a.m.: Do my toothbrushing-facewashing thing while I check the BBC News Android app for news of the world and Chicagoist mobile site for news of the Windy City. Have wife tell me to stop playing with that damned phone already and come eat breakfast with the family.
9:51 a.m.: Finish light breakfast of cereal, fruit and tea to prime my stomach for the rest of the day. Warming up is important before a strenuous workout.
10:01 a.m.: Everybody’s finished and just chillin’ on their own around the house, so read my phone some more — this time, Deadspin and ESPN to prepare for the day’s three NFL games. Think about how adding a third non-Dallas / non-Detroit game has nothing to do with Thanksgiving traditions and is just a brilliantly underhanded way for the NFL to shoehorn a game onto its own network, thereby avoiding the need to share any revenue at all (even advertising) with the networks.
11:17 a.m.: Finish up a round of NFL reading and jump in on the food prep. Search for “mashed potato recipe” in my Gmail phone app as I forget my mom’s recipe for the 4th year in a row. Simultaneously celebrate and bemoan the fact that my phone fits me so well as a brain-augmenting device.
11:20 a.m.: Argue again that using a pressure cooker will mess up the potatoes because they don’t get enough potato-starch glue without boiling. Volunteer to clean up the pot later for being a pain in the ass and producing so much starch-glue.
11:44 a.m.: Look up a recipe on the Epicurious phone app in response to a query about yams, find an interesting-sounding ingredient, then decide this ingredient is too much work because it’s not directly in front of my lazy ass. Substitute butter instead.
12:02 p.m.: Chop celery for the stuffing while I pick at the bowl of cashews nearby. I’m finally looking at something that isn’t my phone.
12:30 p.m.: First NFL game begins in Detroit. On goes the TV while I find the mute button for when Terry Bradshaw and/or Nickelback appear. I really hope Joe Buck isn’t calling this one, but he usually sticks to Dallas thanks to the Troy Aikman connection. I already hate the Cowboys, so it’s not like he’ll ruin that game.
12:31 p.m.: Start checking the NFL scores against the Yahoo! Pro Football Pick ‘Em page because I forget the spread every five minutes. (For the record, I like Green Bay giving 6, Dallas giving 7 and San Francisco getting 3.5.)
3:14 p.m.: Lounging around for hours gives way to a guilty need to excuse the lounging around for hours. Hit the treadmill for an intended 45 minutes but laze out at 30. Track it on JEFit. Have some crotchety old-guy resident yell at me for making too much noise when I unstrap the velcro on my armband. (Florida!)
4:30 p.m.: Shower. Fit my belt one notch looser than normal. Google “history of potatoes” and find the tubers’ Andean origin fascinating.
5:30 p.m.: FOOD.
7:30 p.m.: Food aftermath involving the loosest pants I can find. More NFL. More spread-checking. Curse myself for not picking Detroit and Miami after they cover the spread and leave me 0-2.
8:01 p.m.: Finally have room for dessert: three kinds of pie, minimum. Cherry remains unsurpassed.
9:33 p.m.: Awake to a start from food/football coma. Realize Baltimore is blowing out San Francisco. Check the weather on my phone for tomorrow and call it a day — A DAY OF SUCCESS.
Happy Thanksgiving, all.
