My interesting relatives have died off, and have been replaced with much more boring ones. Either way, we were never big on holiday dramatics.

Popping in from the library near where our T-day festivities are this year. (Landing page on the library's wireless: Thou shall not use the South Country WiFi for ill purposes.)

T-day so far has included enormous amounts of food and wine - breakfast of prosecco and pumpkin pie stand out. Plus walks down to the water, card games, sighting of a flock of wild swans, trying to stump the electronic 20 questions, a fake horse head left in someone's bed, and a midnight commando raid to plant the front lawn with a few dozen plastic flamingos, complete with a sign attributing the deed to the (very snooty and persnickety) village architectural board.

Oh! And I just got someone to check out Weaver and the Factory Maid , which I came across on the first shelf I looked at her. It helps that I had already been pimping Deb's books during a long conversation about modern fiction this morning.

Have not yet made it into the city - looks like it won't happen today. But it's just so damn nice out here.

I'm sure it helps that my nephews and neice are delightful and fairly well-behaved.

(I was recently dismayed to find out that three of the four nephews are now old enough to drive. It seems just a few years ago that they were this high.)

We've been pretty sans T-Day Drama in my family as well. The owrst we have is when my Uncle Matt decides to be a total cooter and say something rude about my brother because he spent so much money and time on his degree and ended up working "at Target". He does not, in fact, work "at Target". He works FOR Target, in their world headquarters, is kind of high up on the distribution food-chain, and makes a shitload of money.

We usually save our drama for the funerals. Same Uncle. Told my sister that her smoking was the reason she "couldn't find a job OR a man."

We have zero Thanksgiving drama too. Easy, when you don't observe it.

Well, that's cheating.

Do you guys have like, fisticuffs over who gets the last of the bun and cheese on Easter?

Oh, Christmas is pretty savage, let me tell you.

Now that I don't have the puzzle to do, I just actually finished a book! If this keeps up, I may actually clean or something.

My friend Cuttle had the most Thanksgiving drama I ever heard of. His Mom had been convicted of embezzling and had one last Thanksgiving before she did time. She wound up in a huge screaming match with the father and he picked up the turkey and smashed it on the floor in front of all six kids.

Cute dancing toddler: [link]