David, you just made me SUPER excited for Christmas to come. I love Thanksgiving, too, because of the family and the food and the getting a chance to hang out and have fun with people and watch movies and drink wine and take long walks through the leaves. But there's just more to Christmas: there's the Advent season, and the first snowfall, and Christmas Eve, and Boxing Day, and new presents to play with and new books to read, and Christmas music to listen to.

Actually, I just love the whole fall/winter holiday season. Pretty much from my birthday through till New Year's is all happy and exciting for me.

Nog is gross but delicious.

Egg nog! Actually, what I like even more than egg nog (heresy!) is Silk Nog. Oh, so good: sweet and rich and creamy. I need to stop by Whole Foods tomorrow and see if they still have any!

edit: bon, I pretty much agree, which is why Silk Nog (delicious and yet not gross!) is so good. t /evangelist

I was a much more rational 5 year old than many of you.

I think I've already told here about one of my most vivid childhood memories, of a Passover holiday we spent at my grandmother's. I was four years old, and my father took me to bed before the 'Seder' was over, because I nearly fell asleep at my seat. Ever since then, and for years, I couldn't shake the feeling that all that is happening to me is, in fact, part of the dream the four-year-old me is dreaming at my grandmother's, and that I can wake up at any minute from it.

It's still strange for me to realize that I actually know people who celebrate both THanksgiving and Christmas. For me they are both holidays that only characters in books and movies are celebrating, not real people, since they're so much not a part of my everyday life in any way.

The looniversity shortened Thanksgiving week for students this year (and not, I'll not for staff, the bastages), going from three days of class to two. The funny part is that they are shocked, shocked!! that an even shorter week would encourage more of them to take off early for the vacation.

A friend of mine left yesterday to spend the week at her parents'. In New Jersey!! If my parents were in commuting distance, I don't think I'd ever spend more than one night sleeping there. Of course, I have the whole lost-my-bedroom, sleep-on-a-pullout-sofa-in-the-den issue, which maybe she doesn't have, but still.

I'm kinda meh on egg nog. Those orange chocolates you wack and eat, on the other hand, are yummy. As is mom's venison mincemeat. And the Christmas pudding with hard sauce. Mmmmmmmm. Hard sauce is a blob of softened butter with a dash of vanilla and a metric buttload of powdered sugar mixed in and I eat the pudding mostly to get to the sauce. So good.

I'm afraid no one can convince me to drink soy again.

Hard sauce is a blob of softened butter with a dash of vanilla and a metric buttload of powdered sugar mixed in and I eat the pudding mostly to get to the sauce. So good.

I thought it was booze that put the "hard" in hard sauce.

I'm afraid no one can convince me to drink soy again.

Bad experience? I almost never drink regular soy milk straight (though I use it on cereal and in tea), but the nog is a whole 'nother thing altogether.