turkey day

I once again managed to cook a 15lb bird inside my tiny Japanese oven. I was as surprised as anyone. We also had pumpkin soup, kabbocha risotto, mashed potatos, twice-baked potatos, dressing, green bean casserole, challah, and cornbread. I made two desserts, but nobody had room for pumpkin pie. Only the bread pudding went. My English friend Eddie looked like he wanted to just pick up the gravy boat and drink it. And his (Japanese) wife Mami easily managed to eat 3 times what I could. Very perplexing, considering that she's about the same size as the Misty Lane children.

Anyway, I'm exhausted (and I have to go to work - no long weekend here). More later.

update: Our friend Angie has a picture of the turkey here. She also had the energy to write more.

best midterm coverage quote

I try to steer clear of politics on this blog (which is hard sometimes), but this quote from Die Welt was just too good:

Die Wahlschlappe für US-Präsident Bush ist perfekt.

Kitty-mum, I hereby propose we begin referring to future significant election losses as "Wahlschlappe(n)." I knew there was a reason I studied German.

a brief note on language

We've been remiss in writing, not for lack of events, but for time. In the last two weeks I have been to a wake (I do need to write at length about that - it was... different), Sam and I both transformed parts of our schools into haunted houses for Halloween (and got two hours of sleep a night for awhile), and I'm now helping my kids rehearse a short play they'll be performing in English on Friday.

Since I'm tired and can't really do all that justice, you'll have to content yourselves with an anecdote from this morning. First of all, you must understand that the Japanese language has fewer consonants than English. In particular, it lacks anything resembling the letter L. It just doesn't exist. When Japanese speakers encounter words with an L sound, they replace it with an R, which is the closest thing they've got. With that background in mind, imagine the look on my face this morning when a 50 year-old woman smiled, said hello, and asked me about "election day" in the States. She didn't understand why I had to stifle laughter.