Happy Thanksgiving everybody. It’s a bittersweet holiday for me, personally. On the one hand, it’s always great to get a day off. On the other hand, I have to go and hang out with the in-laws for what will no doubt feel like hours. Usually very tense hours as I watch my wife squirm and look for a way to leave me alone with her parents while she goes and hides somewhere. She just doesn’t seem to have mastered the art of ignoring everything that her parents say (I don’t know why – she’s pretty good at ignoring everything I say).

Me, I just try to snap off the circuit breaker that connects my brain to my ears and do that whole married guy smile and nod thing, as best I can. Fortunately actual responses to the myriad of questions that arise aren’t actually required of me – though because my job is vaguely related to “the computer” I’ll probably be pressed into doing some tech support. Which wouldn’t be an issue if my mother-in-law understood the concept of “one question at a time” (not to mention, I can’t actually look at something while you’re jabbering away over my shoulder) which she really doesn’t. I don’t get halfway through one response before I get 20 other questions.

Then there’s having to convince everybody that I’m not actually kidding when I say I don’t want to eat this, that, or the other thing, or that, yes, I am full and no, I don’t want any more. And I don’t want gravy, or pie, or ice cream, or a shitty Coors Lite – I appreciate your concern, but (especially theses days) no means “no.”

I have no desire to talk politics, either. That’s not a conversation that’s going anywhere good (they don’t get cable tv so they can’t watch Fox News but my mother-in-law is a big Glenn Beck fan – did you know he’s from Everett, WA? Must be something in the water – and my father-in-law was a Nazi, so to the extend that he actually knows what’s going on these days, I’m sure he’s a big Trump fan).

Mostly, I just wanna stay home. Sitting around alone (except for the dogs) on Thanksgiving might sound lonely and depressing, but to me it sounds kind of peaceful.

On the bright side, once tomorrow’s festivities are over, other than being on-call, I’m off until next Tuesday.

Of course sad news this week in that David Cassidy died. We watched the Partridge Family when I was a kid (back in the days of 4 channels, so not a lot of choice) but I can’t say I was a big fan or anything (more of a Cowsills kinda guy I guess), but it’s always sad to see somebody die so young. And by young, I mean anybody within about 20 years of my age – an ever-moving target.

Anyhow, whatever it is you do today, I Hope you have a good one. Rest up, because I know you’ll wanna get out there bright and early for all those Black Friday deals (not that you have to wait until tomorrow, of course, when you can head out to Walmart, Best Buy, Target, and a host of other truly American institutions that don’t give a shit for their employees or the American way of life and will be open today).

Don’t forget – only 32 days (remember when they used the quaint phrase “shopping days” because there were actually days when you couldn’t shop?) until X-mas.

So, tomorrow is Election Day, which first and foremost means I earn a comp day for working, because it’s a holiday for we godless public employees here in NY State. I think the idea is (or at least was originally) that we’d be able to take this day off to make phone calls for candidates or drive people to the polls or whatever. I guess there are probably a lot of state, county, and municipal employees who still actually do that, though I’ve never been one of them. And it’s not because I’m lazy (I am, but that’s not it), but because I have a really hard time calling people on the phone (I hate even calling people I know or making appointments and stuff like that) – let alone going door-to-door. But I’m also not a veteran, and I’ll be earning a day off for 11/11, too.

As for tomorrow, it’s one of those off-year elections where in theory you can make a “real difference” by voting for local offices, but where, in reality, you can’t do shit. At least where I live. We’ve only got a handful of offices up for grabs, and of those, only two are actually contested. And I can pretty much guarantee you the Republicans will in those two because that’s just how it is up here.

Guess I’ll be writing some people in, again.

There are some more interesting races going on in Syracuse (like Mayor, Common Council, etc.) but I don’t get to vote for those.

Here in NY State, though, we have some propositions to vote on. One is on whether or not to hold a Constitutional Convention, which will hopefully get defeated, because if they manage to get one of those going, the rich people will get to buy delegates to it and fuck the people over (and by “the people” I mostly mean me).

The second one is whether or not elected officials who are convicted of a felony (we’ve got a lot of that going on here in NY) should be eligible to receive their pensions. I have a pretty good notion of how that one’s gonna go.

And the third prop eould make it easier for municipalities to fix a road, install public utility lines or add bicycle trails to the Adirondack Forest Preserve, which everybody (including the environmental groups, from what I can find) seems to be in favor of.

In my county, there’s also a proposition to transfer control of the County penitentiary from our County Executive to the Sherriff’s Department. Gee, I dunno. I haven’t been able to find the union’s position on this, which I guess means they at least don’t hate the idea. So, what the hell, I guess I’m in.

It’s a darn shame I can’t just get the ballot ahead of time so I can fill it out and drop it off. I guess I could go the absentee ballot route, but I have a sneaking suspicion they never even bother opening those. At least, not until the election’s long over.

Oh well, at least I know the lines won’t be long.

If your only exposure to Guy Fawkes Day is the movie V for Vendetta, you might think that this evening’s bonfires and fireworks in Great Britain are in celebration of a hero. Actually, it’s a celebration of a traitor to the Crown being caught and the plot to blow up the House of Lords and King James foiled. Fawkes was actually a disgruntled Catholic (a bit redundant) who, along with his 12 fellow plotters, was hoping to replace the Protestant James with James’ daughter Elizabeth, who was apparently a good Catholic girl. Or something. I don’t know – I really don’t get all the religious bullshit, never mind the post-Magna Carta British monarchy. Anyhow, on November 5, 1605, Fawkes was discovered underneath Parliament, hanging around with a match and a few dozen barrels of gunpowder. At which point, I’m sure he said something to the effect of “Gunpowder? Nope, that’s not my gunpowder. Just watching it for a friend.”

So, anyway, King James ordered everybody to light bonfires in celebration of his not being blown up, and after three or so days of torture (the Brits were rather good at that sort of thing – though I expect they referred to it as “enhanced interrogation”) Fawkes gave up his co-conspirators and he and the ones they captured were all convicted and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered – which is a rather unpleasant way to die. Fawkes went last, and either managed to jump off the scaffold or he just fell, or maybe the rope was too long. At any rate, he managed to snap his neck and therefore escaped the really nasty bits (well, he escaped being alive for it – they did it anyway).

Rather a sick mind to come up with that punishment (apparently devised in the 13th Century – by a committee, no doubt) and not actually taken off the books until 1867, and I can’t imagine how twisted you’d have to be to actually be the person to carry it out. If you weren’t nuts when you started, you’d have to be by the time it was over.

Still, they may want to bring it back here in the US, for things like lying to Congress. But maybe only if you’re the Attorney General or something.

Just a thought.