Thanksgiving Recap, Part I: The Overarching Theme

The following conversations, each of which took place over the Thanksgiving holiday, all have a common thread to them, which pretty much defined my (and my friend Mark's) Thanksgiving holiday.

Annoying kid behind me on the plane: Mommy, Kayla smells funny!
Kayla's dad [to Kayla's mom]: Did she poop?
Kayla's mom: I don't know, why don't you check?

***

Me: Hey Mark, thanks for picking me up!
Mark: Good to see you.
Me: Hey, can I ask you two weird questions to start?
Mark: ... Uh, okay.
Me: Can we stop at a drugstore?
Mark: Sure.
Me: And then can we do a load of laundry when we get back to your place?
Mark: You brought dirty laundry with you?
Me: Well, I wasn't planning on having to do a load of laundry.
Mark: ...

***

Me: I'm going to use the bathroom. Do you have a candle or something?

***

Mark: You did a second load of laundry? Did you forget how much laundry you brought?
Me: You're really not understanding my need to do laundry during this trip, are you?
Mark: Well, you know, you brought a load, and didn't even do the whole load....
Me: Uh, again, I was not planning on having to do laundry....

***

Mark: No more eggs at TGI Fridays at Dulles! Ever! No more food at Dulles, ever!

***

Mark: AGAIN?!? Good Lord, man!

***

Yeah. Okay, so I left DC on Thanksgiving morning at an ungodly hour. My ride picked me up at 4:30 A.M. I arrived at the airport, of course, at an ungodly hour as a result, which meant I had time to kill. Because it was early yet, and I was hungry, I decided to stop into the TGI Friday's at the gate area for some food. I wanted to be waited on to kill some time, rather than just grab a quick cookie from the Starbucks.

This led to my downfall.

I'm going to go ahead and blame a really horribly bad set of eggs from that very TGI Fridays for the rest of the Thanksgiving weekend, which literally lasted through Sunday evening. Mark and I spent some time in Seattle, and still more time in Vancouver, but most of our time was marred by the incessant need to be near a set of facilities.

Sometimes, that just wasn't possible.

I have crapped in some of the most disgusting bathrooms in pubs in Vancouver. (Though I have to admit, for the most part they weren't as bad as I would have expected them to be.) I have even crapped in a bathroom in a rest stop on I-5 South. [Aside to the guy in the Miata with the DIVA plates: if you're going to cruise the underside of toilet stalls, perhaps you'd want to do it when someone else isn't in the room.]

If you'll recall, this has happened to me once before, and it wasn't pretty. Although this time didn't keep me up all night, it did cause me intermittent problems for days on end. Not pleasant.

Remember Four Weddings and a Funeral, when Hugh Grant is seated at a table filled with his exes, and they start talking about how indiscreet he was about his past relationships? One of his past relationships was with "Vomiting Veronica," who puked all over India or something. Well, that was me in Vancouver. Except that I wasn't vomiting. Yeah.

But other than that, how did you enjoy the parade, Mrs. Kennedy? In fact, it was pretty good. More recaps tomorrow. I'm dog tired now.


[Part II]
[Part III]