Hopefully you’ll read this before it gets archived =P. I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving. It was quite busy at the Jeske household, but worth it! The weekend before the day of stuffing, me and Susan went out and got our last bit of groceries… T-Day was coming and there was no stopping it now. Luckily with our compressed work week schedule, we only had to work Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday was our day to get a lot of work done (like cleaning the house, even though it wasn’t that dirty 😉 ). My mission was to get the turkey dethawed… it would have been a lot easier if we had pulled it out Sunday night and put it in the fridge, but who wants easy? The nearly 15 pound bird took eight hours to finally thaw out and in the meantime Susan had gotten quite a few dishes prepared (including a green bean cassorale that for some reason didn’t taste right – we think it was the pan it sat in before being cooked..) Susan’s folks planned to be there in the evening to help get things ready the next day (Susan mom did the driving from the bridge, we all knew should could do it!)
We all thought Applebee’s sounded good for dinner, especially since they have really good desserts (the shooters I recommend the strawberry cheesecake one!) After dinner, everyone took my recommendation and we all got the strawberry cheesecake shooter, hehe! It was kind of late we we got back, but we had to get the pumpkin cheesecake ready. Everyone took part in making it (must of been why it turned out so good!) After getting everything ready, in the oven it went. Soon after, it got very smokey in our house… the butter we had put in was dripping from the spring-form and creating a nice smoke cloud in our house. After pulling it out and cleaning up the mess as best we could (once the oven cooled a little). The cheesecake went back in to finish baking. I must have drew the short straw, because I was the one who made it sure it was done and in the fridge just before 3:00 AM. I was suppose to put the oven on it’s self-cleaning feature, but I forgot…
Everyone was up early the next day (well except for me, I got to “sleep-in” til nine o’clock). The first thing on our agenda was to get that oven cleaned… It only took four hours, but man did it come out all shiny again (and created a second wave of smoke clouds). Even though it was below freezing outside, we had all the first floor windows opened to blow the smoke out (it was quite frosty in there!) After a couple calls from my mom, we found out they were almost there and just in time for kick-off. The Lions put up a tremendous effort during the second half of the game, but it wasn’t enough to overcome Favre and his Packers… (guess they don’t always win on Thanksgiving). Even though dinner was suppose to be around 4:30, we acutally ate around close to six… There was a lot of found to go around, the tables were all decorated nicely, and I hope everyone enjoyed themselves. After dinner me and my mom packed the food up, no we don’t keep bags in the dishwasher mom ;), and got the kitchen all cleaned up.

We even had a little showdown between Marcus and Scout. It all started the day before Marcus got there, Susan’s folk’s had brought a box full of stuff, including a Christmas present for Marcus. Scout saw that big red bow on top and claimed it for herself (spoiled cat…) Anyway, the next day Marcus came and Scout did not take a liking to him, he would chase her around and she would run and hide (I don’t know why Scout wouldn’t like him). It wasn’t long before Marcus was into Scout’s toys and he really liked her ball (that’ll show her 😉 ). When nap time came, Scout couldn’t resist the play pen and was trying to sharpen her claws on it (even though she doesn’t have any front ones… silly cat, don’t tease the baby). Things finally mellowed out between them, Marcus was sleeping and Scout was hiding under the couch…

Heh, been awhile hasn’t it? Since the last time I wrote we’ve been pretty busy. A couple weekends back we figured it would be best to seal our garage floor before winter came. We picked up some supplies from the Home Depot and were ready to get started… We managed to get all our stuff out of the garage and couldn’t believe how big the garage actually was (we had a lot of stuff in there). Sealing was pretty easy, basically it was a lot of cleaning/scrubbing and then spreading the sealer on. We waited the two days and tested it by dripping a little water on it, it didn’t soak in, but beaded up… success! We put most of the stuff in the basement and thats where it still is (it’s nice to have a clean garage 🙂 ).

I don’t think I’ve mentioned on here, but I’ve joined a racquetball ladder. I learned very quickly I’m not as good as I thought I was… Some of the guys on this ladder have been playing for over 25 years (yeah, I didn’t have a chance). You can track my progress over here . My game has defintely improved since I started and I’m pretty excited for this week’s matches (two macthes are played every week). The ladder has been fun, but one day me and Susan were having a friendly game when my wallet was stolen. We were on court 4 and there were a couple of “hood-lums” playing on the court across from us. As usual I put my wallet on the ledge outside the court. At one point during play, their ball came into our court and one guy raced up stairs to “look” for it. I grabbed it and gave it back to the guy still left in the court. We played a little more until the manager came around telling us we had five minutes until closing. At this point we got our stuff together and I noticed my wallet was missing. I thought Susan was trying to pull something, but I soon realized she wasn’t. The next day I spent getting my identity back (it’s exciting driving around without a license 😉 ). It seems there was suspicous activity caught on a camera in the hall, but I haven’t heard anything yet…