Student SPHere 2008-09

Well, I am feeling rested and energized now! We spent a week visiting my family in Kansas City, MO for the holidays. The biggest event by far was my sister having her first baby, my beautiful niece Nithya.

It was such a powerful experience coming together as a family to welcome our newest member. Everyone was excited about the baby, passing her around like an adorable little hot potato all week. I am so proud of my sister and her partner for their teamwork as new parents-- I think they'll be great!

I also spent a day in Lawrence, KS with my other sister, visiting the campus where she is a graduate student in Communication Studies. Her office is so nice compared to mine, I can't say I wasn't a bit jealous.

It was striking how different the academics, assistantships, and culture are in her department versus Biostats. I swore up and down that she wouldn't really be teaching, but lo and behold, she was the sole instructor for two sections of an intro speech class. This is far more intense than any teaching assignments I've heard of at U of M.

And she's friends with everyone! There's precious little socializing among Biostats students, particularly outside of school, but her whole incoming cohort (masters and PhD together) seems to be one big happy family. Also a little jealous of that, to be honest. Watching my little sisters grow up into moms and grad students is crazy, I tell ya.

Another bright spot of the trip was receiving my grades. Despite an unusually challenging semester, all my years of schooling experience paid off again. This is definitely encouraging me for next semester, when I am scaling back to only two classes, but both of them doozies.

With a whole week and a couple of weather-related schedule changes, I even managed to get some work done on the Carlin and Louis solutions manual while at home. We're planning to have it done for spring semester textbook adoptions, so I need to get the last few problems worked out before the new semester. It's a little frustrating to be this close to finished and still struggling with odds and ends, but I know I'll be excited to see it done.

And finally, a little plug for some computer nerdery. My dad helped me update my installation of the open-source operating system Ubuntu, which is a flavor of Linux. I only run one program that requires Windows (WinBUGS; though there is a LinBUGS for Linux, it doesn't seem to be very dependable yet), so I still dual boot. Eventually, I would like to free myself entirely from the evil Microsoft empire. So far, R, LaTeX, Firefox, and Picasa-- all the things I use most frequently-- are working beautifully.

For people not acquainted with the open-source movement, in short, the benefits are free software, better security, and a poke in the eye to "the man." Particularly as an academic, I love the freedom, openness, and spirit of innovation that go with open source.

Have a safe and happy new year!

Posted at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So… Where did we leave off? … I think the last time I said anything I was bracing myself for finals and ready for a break.

Well, finals are over and I have somewhat of a break. I still have to work but because I don’t have classes I don’t have to do it everyday. For now, Im working on finding a job and getting into med school. What can I say, the holiday season is not the same without family. But because all of mine are in Ghana, I have to deal with the worst of the Minnesota weather. I cant say that it is all bad because I do happen to like my solitude at times.

I am not sure how many of you made it out to the AHC Multicultural society event on 12/12/08 but “A healing touch�? was a success and I want to say a huge thanx to those that made it out. For all of you that have NO idea what im talking about, we hosted a stress buster on that Friday where there was free food and free 10 minute chair massages. It was a great event and I must say, those massages were divine. Hopefully, we can have it again next year.

D and Achana having the time of their lives

Meet the women of the AHC multicultural society

Lately, I find time to go to the mall(gosh its crazy over the holidays), hang out with friends, bake, volunteer at the PNC, work on my masters project and finally READ!

Brit holding up the cake we made on the weekend(dont worry we were gonna put it in the oven)

Posted at 1:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm thisclose to the end of the semester, and I'm feeling good about it -- but, though it's strange to admit, I totally wish I could take my last final right now and just be done. My epi exam was Saturday AT 8AM (ugh), and it was tough but could-have-been-worse tough, and I'm just glad it's over. I finished up a CHE take-home exam which didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would over the weekend. Now I'm just waiting for biostats at 8am on Thursday. A little nervous? Yeah. Studying like crazy? Not exactly. But at 10am Thursday I won't even care.

Of course I've been trying desperately to distract myself from finals, preferably with things I can pretend are productive, educational, helpful, etc. This morning, a big group of CHE ladies went to Common Roots Cafe on Lyndale to "study biostats," which we did for a few minutes and you can imagine how it went from there.

Then The Boyfriend and I headed -- through the nasty snow -- to the Science Museum, just for fun. A Texas transplant, he hadn't been there before, and I wanted to see the CSI exhibit before it's over on Jan. 4. Very cool. Maybe cooler if you're 10, but whatever. And I was totally impressed with all the health stuff! I shamelessly went through all the Disease Detectives activities to diagnose fake patients with malaria and e. coli.

Last week, some CHErs and friends headed to 80s night at the Shout House (dueling piano bar, highly recommended) to celebrate the last day of classes...

The Boyfriend and I made our annual Minnesota (and new this year -- Texas!) Christmas cookies to send to his fam...

And we, of course, laughed at our dog who decided to eat his new run for a midnight snack...

Otherwise I've just been looking forward to my weeklong post-finals nap, lounging with my fam up north and doing nothing. Well...almost nothing. Since I'm incapable of actually doing nothing, I'm working with the Minnesota Department of Health's refugee health program on evaluating some health education videos and other materials for refugee and immigrant groups. My car is full of boxes, and I have a huge bag of VHS tapes -- good thing the 'rents still have a VCR! I'm still deciding (very quickly, I know) whether I want to try to use this as my field experience or wait until the summer.

And I'll be attempting to run as much as possible in preparation for the Polar Dash 10K on New Year's Day -- and praying that it's not absolutely freezing, dumping snow, pelting freezing rain or any other torturous winter thing that only Minnesota knows how to do.

Happy holidays to everyone! Enjoy break, and stay warm!

Posted at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This last Saturday, I had the distinct pleasure of taking my Stat8101 final exam. The joy of a two hour Saturday exam was augmented by one of the nastiest colds I have ever had in my life. And let me tell you, there is nothing in the universe quite as elating as futzing through proofs for two hours while it feels like you are simultaneously being strangled by a very weak boa constrictor and choking on a large, hairy insect. After that “fun� was over, I thought I would treat myself to the Blizzard of the Month at Dairy Queen. I am a member of the Blizzard fan club, and had not yet partaken of this month’s soft serve tastiness, but alas! My few minutes serene of tooth-rotting bliss was shattered by the appearance of a pair of a most particular breed of Minnesotan: the Twin-Cities Hobo.
Now, in New York there were many, many, many hobos. In fact, the only thing in New York more populous than the hobos are the Starbucks. However, these hobos were classy. They did not rudely accost you and demand money. They did not belligerently argue with you about how much booze money they felt you should give them. No, they sat quietly out of the way, peeing on themselves in solitude. But, not Twin Cities hobos, oh no! They initiate conversations, aggressively demand money, and in general interact much more closely with any unfortunate soul who happens to be within shouting distance. Such actions from a New York hobo are rare, and are only accompanied by a mugging. So if you are approached by a Manhattan hobo, you should run like heck, because you are about to get stabbed and stripped of your iPod. Needless to say, I was not comfortable with the fact that this dynamic duo was attempting to cozy up with me and my blizzard, filling my nostrils with the sophisticated potpourri of body odor, urine and cheap alcohol. I left my blizzard to fend for itself and scurried home. I have to say, these Twin Cities hobos could take a lesson in panhandling etiquette from their more sophisticated Big Apple compatriots. Let’s get with the program guys.
The rest of the weekend was enveloped in a baking flurry. I was lucky enough to just have a 24-hour “bug,� so feeling quite refreshed on Sunday, I cranked up my favorite Elvis album, and rip snorted my way through seven varieties of cookie: double chocolate biscotti, spritz, mini pecan pies, rolled sugar cookies, caramel pecan clusters, chocolate mint puddles, and Russian tea cakes. I now have over 350 cookies in my apartment, and it is glorious.
Speaking of glorious, how about those Steelers? If it took a “controversial touchdown� to secure the title, then so be it. A win is a win in my book. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some cookies to eat…

Posted at 8:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Only a few days left! Man, I've been waking up thinking about my Linear Models take-home exam and going to sleep thinking about my Linear Models take-home exam. The report is up to 15 pages, but my pace has started to slow. In these last two days before it's due, I need to focus my efforts so I can also do a bit of studying for the Survival final on Thursday. It's incredible how all this anticipation and wishing it would be over turns into anxiety about not having enough time before it's all finished!

My presentation in Probability Models last week went really well. I devoted a lot of time to preparing the talk, hoping to dig out of the hole I got into with the midterm. My partner Tom and friend Julia were both super helpful, listening to my talk, asking questions, and giving great suggestions. It was an interesting paper, and I think I managed to get across all the salient points without losing anyone during the technical hand-waving. Whew!

This Thursday, I took a study break to represent Biostatistics at the annual SPH Winter Reception. This year's theme was something about Hollywood, so we played an adaptation of Hollywood squares, with SPH faculty on the panel instead of C-list celebrities. Our team didn't fare so well, but we had fun and a few laughs at the "creative" answers given by panelists. Here's a picture of Dean Finnegan and me, yukking it up.

Tomorrow, we're getting blasted with some truly awful temperatures (a high of -6 F with windchills as low as -30 F). I'd like to stay in my cozy condo, since I have no classes, but I have to take the bus in to school for my annual tuberculin skin test (TST). SPH, as part of the Academic Health Center, has more serious communicable disease prevention programs than the rest of the U. Everyone must have documented immunizations to register, as well as annual TB screening. This year, two of my public health efforts inadvertently clashed. My first attempt at the TB test was aborted when I discovered I'd had my flu vaccine too recently. For most people, this wouldn't be a problem, but I always get the live attenuated version (FluMist), which would interfere with the TST. Ah well. I won't feel like a real Minnesotan unless I get out there and truly experience the ludicrous temperatures.

Posted at 9:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So its been a pretty crazy week, but its over. Monday my group for risk analysis met in the afternoon to go over our final presentation for class. For those of you not in Minnesota, we got a mild snowstorm on Monday. We got a few inches, our first real snow maker. Well I forgot how much “fun�? the bus ride home can be when it snows, just like how people forget how to drive. I hopped on a bus at the U at 4:45 and got on my transfer downtown. Downtown was a parking lot. It took our bus an hour to get to the on ramp for 35W from 4th and 3rd. Then it took the bus another hour to get to the park and ride in Bloomington. I got home a little after 7 and remembered why I need to pack a book to read. I am glad I was not driving in the mess though. I am so thankful for those bus drivers.

Tuesday was a busy day, the last day of three of my classes (phew). Our risk analysis group met before class that night, to go over our presentation one last time. We nailed it and learned a bit in the process. Wednesday was the last day for one more class. On Thursday night our epidemiology of zoonoses class got together at Old Chicago. It was a lot of fun hanging out with classmates who have become friends this semester/last few years. It was a great way to finish off the semester.

I had a goal on Friday, to finish the two take home exams I had left. I did not quite finish both on Friday, but was done Saturday morning. So this weekend has been wonderful, knowing that I don’t have anything else to do for school until late January. I am looking forward to a few less stressful weeks working on projects at work and spending more time with my wife.

Don’t forget to bundle up tomorrow…the National Weather Service is projecting wind chills of up to -25 and a high of -1 on Monday. It's mornings like that that when I don’t like standing at a bus stop, brrr.

Posted at 8:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wow! I cant believe it… I have one more week and this semester is over. I should apologize for being silent for almost a month. As you can imagine it has been quite the crazy whirlwind of a semester. I have had papers and tests to take like most everyone else but having to go to work, volunteer at the PNC, prepare my masters proposal and plan an event for the AHC multicultural society kinda had me in overdrive.

Now that I can breathe again, I have 3 presentations, 2 quizzes, a fact sheet, 3 papers and tons of discussion/reaction pieces behind me (within the last 2 weeks). Of course I still have a “working in global health�? exam and a “management�? paper due on Wednesday next week but for now im concentrating on breathing(its been rather hard to do that in the past few weeks).

In fact, I was getting so good at breathing that I volunteered to be Goldy’s assistant at the winter reception yesterday (to make sure he didn’t bump into anything). It was a fun afternoon and even though I hit the sac hard afterwards it was all worth it. I was a little disappointed because I forgot my camera at home but it turns out Melisa(another blogger) had hers and well… here is evidence.

Posted at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two papers and two exams; these are the only things that stand in the way between me and a winter holiday.

One paper and one exam for next Tuesday; the paper is for Professor Oake's Stata course and the exam is for Professor Wholey's database management course.

One paper for Wednesday; that paper is for Professor Begun's management course.

One exam (a take-home) for Friday; that is for Professor Kuntz's decision analysis course.

Between now and Tuesday are probably going to be the most stressful, but as long as I chug along and put in work a few hours a day, I should be ok.

I made myself a lovely little Gantt chart. The overall "project" to be done with the semester. Most likely I am too optimistic with my scheduling - there are a lot of things I could have completed earlier - but this is what happens when I procrastinate. My only critique is that I didn't break it down to the hour, which is a realistic interpretation of how my deadlines are coming down to. I'm still happy with it though, as it kind of spells everything that needs to be done. It's a little intimidating but I'm sure I will feel better with each task accomplished.

Playing some kind of fishing game last weekend and discovering our slow reflexes

SPH apparel was supposed to come yesterday, but the university bookstore people are completely incompetent. Because this story is not yet resolved, I don't want to get into it. But suffice to say, the Student Senate Executive Board is unhappy. At the moment, we are running around trying to accommodate this unpleasant change of events while trying to study for finals or write papers. Hopefully, everyone who ordered apparel last month will receive their goods before leaving for the holidays.

Today was also the SPH All-School Winter Reception. The theme was Old School Hollywood or something; it was very nicely done! There wasn't a theme last year so it was nice to see all the effort that everyone put into it. Also, there were a lot more people attending than last year. It made for a crowded party, but those are the best kind. The energy was very cheery and I almost forgot that there are finals and papers to be had.

Towards the end, the divisions got together to play Hollywood Squares.

Professor Kuntz representing HPM!

And HPM did not do well; I think if we had figured out a secret hand signal system, our score would have greatly improved. I don't know the rules of Hollywood Squares, so it's impossible to say what we could have done differently. Oh well! At least there is free food and drink to console ourselves!

Whoops

My winter plans are to return to Chicago and spend some time with my family. Originally I was planning to take a short trip to Seattle, Washington, but tickets are too expensive at the moment. Hope everyone is successful with their end of the semester endeavors. Happy Holidays and see you next semester!

Posted at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’m so excited to be nearing the end of this semester. My last final is on the 18th, and afterwards I have the pleasure of seeing an amazing show at the Dakota. The name of the quartet is the Dan Musselman quartet, and, yes, that is my husband! It will be so nice to be able to relax and really enjoy the performance; the last time Dan played at the Dakota was right in the midst of midterms, so I had to lug some textbooks along which really put a damper on the night.
I’ll be presenting my group project in my latent variables class tomorrow and handing in the accompanying final paper. Saturday is my Stat8101 final, and then the 18th is Survival Analysis (and Dan Musselman at the Dakota. $5 cover charge. Good music. I promise).
And yes, I am very excited about the fact that my Steelers managed a 20-13 win over Dallas and Tony “Ears� Romo. I just hope that they don’t blow it in the playoffs.
I have a question for all of the Minnesotans who read this blog. Several times in the past couple of weeks, I have encountered one of the most nonsensical “Minnesota-isms.� It is a phrase that is both uninteresting and absurd (thus proving it must be truly Minnesotan). What exactly do you people mean when you say “going north?� As far as I can tell, WE�RE ALREADY “NORTH.� But seriously, what does that mean? Brainerd? Canada? Alaska? The North Pole? Is that what you mean—that you’re going to visit Santa? You do realize that “north� is just one direction, don’t you? Are you also going east or west? Perhaps you are going to Russia, or maybe Norway? We can’t tell, because all you said is that you are going north. Sometimes, you add the oh-so-helpful word “up,� apparently because there is also a “down north.� Or, is there really some small town in Minnesota named “Up North� where you all go, in which case, I apologize for my confusion.

Posted at 9:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The feels-like-0-degrees temp and blustery day was, of course, the setting for my fourth race of the fall, the Reindeer Run 5K at Lake Harriet. Because of the cold, snow and lack of runner friends for this one, The Boyfriend enthusiastically (?) offered to walk/trot it with me (which we in the self-proclaimed CHE running club call "remixing it").

Notice my double-fleece look and his double-hat look -- it was COLD!

It took an hour or two to thaw out when we got home, then we headed to the Midtown Global Market -- one of my top-ten Minneapolis places -- for the No Coast Craft-o-Rama. Trust me, it's not your Grandma's craft show. And it's HUGE. There were more than 100 vendors selling trendy, creative stuff (it is City Pages' best craft fair, after all) . And about a gazillion people trying to buy it. It was so crowded it was hard to get to all of the booths, which didn't exactly facilitate a buying mood for me, but it was cool to check it out.

The worst part? The line to the Vietnamese restaurant with my favorite frozen bubble tea of all time was so long I had to pass -- and that means it was really, really long.

Later I ran some errands, which I soon realized was a big mistake with the holiday shopping Saturday madness out there. By the time I got home, I was so un-enthused about tackling my gift list that, I admit, I went a little Amazon.com crazy and did some Christmukkah shopping from my couch in my sweatpants. At least I had our newly dragged-out decorations and Christmas music to keep me in the spirit.

Yes, we have a stocking for The Dog. And he'll probably make out better than either of us.

Today I'm trying to get myself motivated to crack open the books and finish this semester off! I have a monstrous packet of biostats practice problems to work through for our review on Tuesday (final is next Thursday) and a whole bunch of epi that I have to make sure I understand (final this Saturday...yikes). Just a couple other little things to do that I'm not too worried about.

I might actually make it through the first semester relatively unstressed and in time to enjoy the holidays! Now only two more years to go...

Posted at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Its been a busy week. Two papers down, one more to go. I had every intention of heading to campus this morning to finish the last paper, but Murphy had other plans. Turns out sometime in the early morning hours, the electronic igniter on our furnace gave out, so we woke up cold. It was 52 in the house this morning; thankfully Centerpoint was able to get a guy out to the house by 10:30. I am just thankful that this happened when we were around, so we could get it fixed right away. So now its all warm again.

I got one more big project left, three take home finals and one more paper. Its going to be a busy few days. The big project is a group presentation of a risk assessment our group has been working on in our Risk Analysis class. It should be interesting as our professor and TA will be our audience and assuming multiple identities, so its kinda like we are talking to a hostile audience. I am not looking forward to the take home finals, they always tend to take a lot of time to finish.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving down in Iowa. We spent the time at Megan’s dad, where we had a wonderful smoked turkey. It was nice to just take a break and enjoy family for a few days. I did not bring any school/work stuff, which made the past few days a bit stressful. It was worth it though, to just kick back and relax a bit. We did hit up the black Friday sales though. It never ceases to amaze me how dedicated some people are to shopping. We ran into people that waited to get into a store and then for two hours in line to buy a few things. Pretty crazy if you ask me. We hit the stores at the late hour of 7 am.
It looks like we have snow in the forecast, I am looking forward to it. I am still enjoying the novelty of shoveling my driveway. I always thought cold weather and a nasty wind chill are more tolerable with a nice snow. At the very least it will help me stay in side and study this weekend.

Posted at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks St Catherine of Siena! I will get through the semester successfully!

Chugging along towards the end of the semester. Today was particularly rough, with a group project that somehow went sour. While the outcome was good - we did a great presentation - I was burdened with a lot of unnecessary stress due to a particularly ornery member. He decided on the morning of our presentation to take charge of things and stake out his own route. I've been managing our project from the start, so it was an unpleasant surprise, as I have been conscious about making sure group members are in harmony with the decision-making process. However, I do get to talk to my professor tomorrow about this. While I'm not concerned about our grade - again, we did fine - I'm concerned on how to deal with people like this. Particularly when they decide to blame me and the choices I've made during the process of the this project. How do people like this get this far without learning to work as a group?

Group projects are always difficult, even if things are well-planned. You never know when there will be a wrench thrown into the cogs. I am slowly learning to be more proactive about this; I'd say that my management skills are pretty solid. Spending a good chunk of time drawing out a timeline is so valuable. I would say that a Gantt chart would be even more helpful as it is more visually appealing, but I'm still working my way up there. However, when it comes to human relations, I feel like a robot; aware that something is deadly wrong but unable to process it and correctly respond.

Thanksgiving break was great. The drive down there was horrendous, it was something like 11.5 hours. Driving back was better, it was only 9. Typically, it should take 6.5 to 7 hours to drive to Chicago. Ugh. I felt like exploding by the end of the journey. But that is what makes the break so much delectable, right? Maybe.

Went to Chicago for a day and visited the Shedd Aquarium. I haven't been there since elementary school or something ridiculous like that. However, it was too crowded and the Oceanarium was closed for construction. That was a bummer, but seeing some nice aquatic creatures almost made up for it.

Big foreheaded fish: I can relate

We watched the iguanas being sprayed with a hose by an employee. Then she bent over this iguana and started peeling off its skin. There were collective "Eeeeeews" all round.

Revealing a pretty bluish color underneath

We spent actual Thanksgiving in Chinatown. It's a great way to spend the holiday since no one is forced to cook. Chinese people do not generally celebrate Thanksgiving so there are tons of delicious restaurants open. My sister did a lot of the cooking for Saturday's dinner, which was more traditional. She used three sticks of butter for the turkey alone. It was delicious and I even was able to take leftovers back to Minneapolis.

Two thumbs up, sis.

Posted at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tom and I spent Turkey Day in the wilds of South Dakota (actually, just outside Sioux Falls) with his family this year. When I wasn't working on a final project, I was having a great time. His folks are delightful: so hospitable, always up for card games, talking politics, or getting out and about.

Highlights of the trip were decorating cookies with his cousins, watching Barack and Michelle's interview with Barbara Walters, playing dominoes with Grandma, and getting in way more exercise than usual. Tom's parents keep the house pretty cold, so it pays to keep the blood flowing.

On the school front, I am delighted to report that this semester is going out with a whimper, not a bang. Thursday, I'm presenting a talk on a paper written by my academic uncle Sudipto Banerjee with my academic grandfather Alan Gelfand. It's a reasonably technical paper and uses a kind of stochastic process we never covered in class, so I've got my work cut out for me. Then one more quick HW and I'm done with probability models!

On Friday, we'll get a take-home final for Linear Models, due 1 week later. After that, I have almost a whole week to study for my Survival final-- awesome! After such an intense semester, I am incredibly grateful for an easier-than-average finals season.

Posted at 7:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Coming back from Thanksgiving break is rough. Very rough.

Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful I got two days off to head Up North for family and turkey and relaxation. It was a much needed break. But getting back into the groove of things -- especially when you know the semester is aaalmost over -- has not been fun.

The good news is that I don't have much left of my first semester of grad school! I can't believe how fast it's gone so far and that the bulk of the work is over. I definitely expected the home stretch and finals to be worse, but I think I did my share of suffering just after midterms.

So, in the just-over-a-week left of classes and less-than-a-week of finals, I have to:

- Do one biostats homework and take my biostats final.
- Do one epi lab and take the epi final (eek).
- Do a (short?! please!) take-home final for community health theory and practice.
- Get some paperwork done for my Star Tribune practicum in the spring.
- Run the Reindeer Run on Saturday!
- Go to the All-School Winter Reception, classes-are-over night out at the Shout House and find some other fun things to do to knock out any stress that might pop up. :)

Posted at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanksgiving has always made me feel like a death row inmate having his final meal. I suppose that’s a little overdramatic—finals are definitely not as bad as being executed, but you get the idea. Can you really enjoy your family (assuming you have an enjoyable family) and good food (assuming someone in your family can cook good food), knowing that in mere hours, you are going to be an overwhelmed basket case plagued by a veritable avalanche of exams and papers? If I were in charge of the universe, I would simply make school start in early August and have finals before Thanksgiving so that we wouldn’t have to endure two and a half weeks of stressful nonsense every December. But if I were queen of the universe, I would also make calculus and physics mandatory courses in high school, Ugg boots illegal, and the entire state of Minnesota would be designated a penal colony (think Stalin’s Siberia), so perhaps it would be for the best if I weren’t in charge. So, like everyone else at the U, today I trudged into work and class wishing it were still Thanksgiving, and praying that my sanity remains intact until the afternoon of the 18th.
But there was something sadly absent this Thanksgiving: an icon of American gluttony that has graced tables across this fair nation for generations: the John Madden turducken. For those of you who may be unaware of the origins of this glorious trifecta of poultry badassness, let me explain: it is a chicken (deboned) stuffed inside of a duck (deboned) stuffed inside of a turkey, so that every serving contains a portion of each bird. Every year on Thanksgiving, John Madden prepares a turducken and then consumes it with the help of several NFL players at one of the Thanksgiving Day football games. Unfortunately, due to poor health (who knows how THAT happened), Madden chose not to cook a turducken this year. The outrage expressed by some of society’s more couth members was understandable. How dare Madden spit in the eye of one of the traditions that makes America the nation that it is (fat as heck). To some, Thanksgiving without the turducken may seem like the Fourth of July without fireworks, or Valentine’s Day without cheap wine and bad chocolate. But let me tell you that some of our nation’s finest young minds really came through for their country this Thanksgiving. Not only did they act as true patriots, defying the will of the mighty John Madden, and insist on creating and consuming the iconic sextaped that has so eloquently defined American redneck culture, but they in their unwavering commitment to all that America stands for, did not stop at the turducken! No, these proud young men were not content to replicate what John Madden so irreverently failed to compose, but rather in a flurry of what can only be called pure genius, these innovators of culinary excellence gave rise to a new level of sheer artery obstruction: the turbacoducken. That’s right, they took a turducken and wrapped it in BACON! If this concept offends you, then the terrorists have truly won.
I did not, in fact, eat a turducken or a turbacoducken on Thanksgiving, but I did watch a LOT of football (I know, you’re stunned!). My husband and I had a nice, quiet meal at home, and the best part was we both got to sleep in!! The weekend as a whole was restorative and relaxing. Now I just have to make it until the 18th…

Posted at 5:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)