I wanted to wait until the first official day of winter to make the transition from the fall site design to the winter version, but I banged out the work over the past weekend, and I just couldn’t wait. Additionally, this year the first day of winter coincides with what may become another annual tradition, the Christmas road trip around the south.

This year, I’m basically making the same round trip that I did last year, only this year The Girl will be along for the entire ride. Just to refresh everyone’s memory, the route looks something like this:

We’re set to leave at about 3 AM on Saturday morning, so that we can cruise into Athens around lunch time on Saturday. We’ll spend a few days with The Girl’s parents there, and then we’ll head out to Mississippi on Christmas day to spend the remainder of the holidays with my family. Sure, we’ll talk to and spend time with everyone, but I have a feeling that these two will get the bulk of the attention, and deservedly so:

I love being on the road, and am really excited about our upcoming trip. The Girl holds less excitement in her heart for the average ‘Great American Road Trip’, but she’s pretty excited about this one. I don’t know what it is really, the sense of being on the open road, and opening up the V6 sleigh, and putting the miles behind us. Getting to see the big cities and the small hamlets that make up our country, and especially the south. Maybe that’s to saccharin and nostalgic, I don’t know, but I still enjoy the feeling, and this time is no different.

We’re going southbound, home, and we’re leaving soon.

Right around three weeks ago now, I turned 30, on Thanksgiving day. Every day since has been a struggle, as I deal with the constraints that old age brings. I’ve had to deal with a myriad of physical ailments throughout my thirties, including a pretty serious sinus infection with accompanying fever, a pulled muscle in my back, which does seem to happen periodically, but has lingered longer now that I’m officially old, and, potentially the most deadly of all…a lingering man cold.

Such is my life, though, now that I’m 30 years old.

Additionally, I live with a real live girl, one that smells nice and looks pretty, but also yells at me for not replacing the toilet paper, and for having to be told to fold my clothes, and this combination of qualities both thrills and scares the living shit out of me at the same time. I live with a constant fear that I’m going to muck the whole thing up in some inane way, like making an accurate, if not particularly subtle, observation about her driving habits, or farting on her leg as I sleep. I’m sure one day she’ll find out that I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to relationships, so to throw her off guard, I’ve asked her to marry me.

We share our apartment with a cat who likes to lick glue and deodorant for the contact buzz, and who bites at my hand when I try to pet her. She is grumpy and irascible, and she is slow to give affection and quick to take it away, and she smells funny. So we stock up on Band-Aids, and continue to give her attention.

I work in a job that I love to hate, for a company that both delights and angers me in any given day. I have co-workers who make me laugh and drive me crazy in the same breath, both of which I seem to enjoy. I work for clients that I complain about when on-site, but can’t imagine staying away from for any extended period of time. I have threatened to quit my job more times than I can count, but I couldn’t imagine working for anyone else.

I have friends that I love, but never see. I complain about this incessantly, and then I’m never available when invites are sent.

29 was so much less complicated.

And yet, I couldn’t be happier.

Last week The Girl and I spent the majority of our free time planning for Thanksgiving by putting together a menu, and a cooking schedule, and by going grocery shopping on Sunday and stocking our refrigerator and our cabinets with more food than might have ever been in our house at a single time before.

The Girl took the entire week off to prep for the big day, and for the arrival of our guests, her parents, and her brother. And so when she called me on my way to work on Monday morning to let me know that they weren’t coming, neither of us were quite sure of what to do. With her family unable to attend, she and I floundered about for the better part of an afternoon, trying to decide what we should do.

We contemplated driving down to Athens, GA with food in tow, creating a sort of Thanksgiving edition of Meals-On-Wheels. We gave it half-hearted consideration, but ultimately we found the idea of carrying two hundred dollars worth of perishable goods, including a fourteen pound turkey in an ice chest, 800 miles south of it’s originally planned point of consumption marginally inefficient, and ultimately unfulfilling. Our original goal for Thanksgiving was to host for the first time, to invite our family into our home to share with them the space in which we live our lives. We decided we were staying put, and damn the consequences

A silver lining was discovered, too. It was to be a Thanksgiving practice run, a chance for us to cook Thanksgiving dinner without the risk of embarrassment of having to order pizza should we fail in our efforts. We decided that we would call around to see in anyone wanted to join us, knowing that in reality everyone would have Thanksgiving plans in place already.

We were wrong. While most people did have plans already, we weren’t the only ones suffering from unfortunate last minute changes of plans. The Dad’s Sister The Cousin’s Mother The Aunt had also seen her plans go awry at the last minute, and was thrilled to join us. And despite the silver lining that we had manufactured to make ourselves feel better about the situation, we were thrilled to have her.

We prepped, planned, and cooked a bit on Tuesday and Wednesday, so that on Thursday morning we were able to wake up at a reasonable hour. Well, I was, at least. The Girl woke up at 6 AM to take the turkey out of the brine. Trooper, she is.

At some point during the morning, I was forced to show the girl the proper way to cook any sort of bird or fowl, when living below the Mason-Dixon line…

After that we were off to the races. We make a good team, The Girl and I, so much so that by the time The Aunt arrived, we had things solidly under control, and after a couple of hours of conversation and oven watching we actually had our feast ready ahead of the schedule that The Girl had so painstakingly created for us.

And Oh, what a feast it was. A bounty. A cornucopia, if you will. The turkey turned out perfectly…

We cooked for five, and fed three, and not a single person uttered a complaint, so much so that we all had a piece each of pumpkin and pecan pie, albeit a few hours later. And it was nice as we sat, and rested our ailing digestive systems, and just were. We are very thankful for The Aunt, and for her presence at our first grown up Thanksgiving. It started out as the Thanksgiving that almost wasn’t, and became the Thanksgiving not to be forgotten before it was over.

See the rest of the pictures here.