Thanksgiving
We decided to wait until Thanksgiving morning to drive down to Melissa and Jeff’s place in North Carolina, since there was bound to be way more traffic than we wanted to deal with Wednesday night. (The last time I drove down was over Presidents’ Day weekend, and it took me more than four hours to get just 60 miles out of town.) The drive down was uneventful, though we passed about 10 cop cars, 7 of which had pulled someone over. It took just about 5 hours total.
Jeff and Melissa prepared us a vegetarian feast. They had looked up Tofurky on the internet, and found that it had a competitor (Quorn) which most people were saying was much more like real turkey, and more tasty. As an experiment, they decided that we should try them both. We agreed with the opinion on the internet — the Quorn was more like real turkey (though my opinion may not count for much, since I haven’t had real turkey in over 14 years), it even flaked a bit like turkey. The Tofurkey turned out a bit rubbery, and had a mass-produced stuffing in the middle. Jeff had made homemade stuffing, so there really was no comparison.
The remainder of the weekend was spent playing games, seeing movies, and just generally vegging out. We did head out to the flea market at the fair grounds Friday, but the outside vendors got rained out shortly after we arrived. We got to try out a couple Steve Jackson games — Chez Geek and Munchkin — which were both quite fun (and I’m not just saying that because I won all the games we played). We broke out the 20th Anniversary Trivial Pursuit that Mom and Dad sent me for my birthday — I did much, much better at this edition than the original. Oh, and we also got to try playing Elfenland with 4 people. Andrew and I had bought this after our board game class, and after playing a couple times, decided that it would probably be better with more players. We were right.
Andrew and I headed out relatively early Sunday morning. Surprisingly, the worst traffic we encountered was in Richmond. On the north end of the city the traffic coming in from Virginia Beach joined I95, causing a large backup. I was discouraged, thinking that the traffic would continue all the way into Washington (over 100 miles away). However, about 20 miles outside the city, it just broke up. Not sure where everyone went, but I’m glad they left. In Frederick, VA, we also encountered a bit of traffic, but that was because of an accident. There was surprisingly little traffic in the final approach to DC. Not that I’m complaining.