Thanksgiving

This is the place to have Thanksgiving. The stores are open all day; you can even go to the post office; you don't have to slip and slide thru the snow to Grandma's house. It was a little weird. For Dale and I it was a regular teaching day. I had one-on-one meetings with the 3rd year students about their Thesis projects and most of them showed up at the appointed time. Dale graded tests and papers all day. After my meetings I wandered down to the old science building to see what the students wanted to talk about in "networking" class. This is an informal class that I have run every Thursday. The students are anxious to know about the details of networking; but what they wanted to know about today was how to hack into the wireless network here in town. I told them it was not an easy thing to do and we discussed why the wireless networks use encryption and other authentication techniques to prevent just such things.

Since I am giving a test on Friday, my Discrete Structures class wanted a help session Thursday so at 2 I wandered over to the "Thin Client Lab" to find it locked up tight. This normally would not be a problem (walk across the street and get a key). However, Mother Nature had another idea and the rains came down in buckets. The drainage ditches around the buildings were 1' deep in fast moving water (I think they were about class 2 rapids). No one goes out during these rains so we were stuck. The other classroom has a metal roof and it is unusable during heavy rains. The rains let up and we had an hour of help session. I will see how the students do when I look at the tests tonight.

Since Marilyn was coming to Thanksgiving with us, she was supposed to meet me in her office at about 3, but she too was trapped in a classroom during the rain. It wasn't a problem, but these rains can last up to 3 hours and when they do, you are where you are. Once the rain let up, Marilyn was able to get her chocolate cake from home and we finally were able to head home.

Again, it looks like a normal day here so Annica and I had some shopping to do before dinner. I had to get pickles (my mother always put pickles on the table), olives (what is Thanksgiving without some black olives?) and some wine. We came home to the wonderful smell of turkey (really two chickens, but we declared them turkey for today ) and stuffing. Carrie and Sharon did an outstanding job of making the dinner as close to Thanksgiving as possible. (Thanks Ginny Johnson for providing us with such a great cook!)

After dinner and an abbreviated game of "bowls" we said good night and ended our wonderful Thanksgiving. Hope all of you had a great day. I got up early in the morning on Friday for shopping on Black Friday (I hope you get the irony of that!) but much to my dismay no one else was up. The market was empty and the only people around were headed off to work. I didn't see anyone of the merchants marking down the price of rice or beans and it appears they have just not gotten into the holiday spirit.