Thanksgiving in Norfolk, VA

My lovely wife, Elaine, and I spent our Thanksgiving this year with my sister and her husband, Karen and Ron, in their turn-of-the-century home in downtown Norfolk. Also making the pilgrimage from Georgia to Virginia were my parents. Since they, unlike the aforementioned family members, did not request their names be specifically mentioned in my blog, I'll change them to protect the innocent. Let's just call them Tom and Barbara White. While I'm thankful to be home, I have to say that this past holiday weekend was one well spent.

Having decided to make the trip up in two days instead of one, Elaine and I stopped just short of Durham, North Carolina to rest our weary heads in a Microtel Inn. We checked in on Wednesday night around 11:30 PM, just in time to catch the tail end of Dolly Dearest, a B-rate horror movie showing on some equally B-rate cable channel. Creepy though it was, I won't be adding the flick to my 5-star movie list. Even creepier however were the the faint stains on the wall of our room. They were illuminated by the irridescent glow cast by the tv. At first glance I suspected they were perhaps the mark of a previous traveller who was watching something other than Dolly Dearest on tv, but on closer inspection I noticed that the spots on the left side of the wall extended out to the left while the spots on the right extended out to the right. I'm no crime scene investigator, but I couldn't help but wonder if I was looking at a poorly painted over blood stain from some unfortunate soul's gunshot wound. I know it sounds sensationalistic, but these things happen at roadside motels. I chose not to share my suspicion with my wife when she came out of the shower.

We arrived in Norfolk around noon on Thanksgiving Day. Karen and Ron greeted us along with their two Boston terriers, Pinky and Dinky. No, I haven't changed her pets' names at their request. Their names truly are Pinky and Dinky. No sooner than we could get our bags upstairs, they served us champagne and snacks. Let me just add here that nothing makes family gatherings more enjoyable than booze. Even Karen's olives were vodka infused. Ingenious! Karen and Ron are definitely members of the culinary cognoscenti. He's a sales rep for Waterside Fish & Produce, a major distributor of prime meats and cheeses. Many of his customers are those restaurants you find reviewed in the local newspaper's Food and Wine section or the pricy pages of Zagat. This skill set also makes him a damn fine chef. You've never had turkey until you've had Ron's turkey.

As for the Thanksgiving dinner, my sister's dessert took the cake. Actually it took the doughnut. She used Krispy Kreme doughnuts to make a bread pudding. I'll have to ask her for the exact recipe, but as I recall it used 16 dozen doughnuts, 42 eggs and 98.6 pi r squared bricks of Plugra® butter. Ok, I'm exaggerating, but it was one pan of sticky rich goodness. That's for damn sure!

On the Friday after Thanksgiving my dad met me and Elaine and walked with us from the Tazewell Hotel to MacArthur Park, Norfolk's downtown mall. I have to preface by saying that I enjoy seeing Christmas decorations in downtown areas. Wreaths, trees, stockings and ice skating rinks all have their place during the Chrismukah season. Norfolk had all that which was good, but it also had this never-ending chorus of recorded children's voices singing early traditional carols in high-pitched falsetto voices. It was being pumped over a vast outdoor sound system. You couldn't escape it. It was just plain eerie. The closest thing I can think of to compare it to is the theme song at the end of Poltergeist. You know the part where kids sing over and over, "la la laa ... la la laa ... la la laa laa laa?" That's what it sounded like, only they were singing The Holly and the Ivy and Bring us a Figgy Pudding or whatever that song's called. I'm sure it was supposed to be festive, but it just sounded like holiday badness.

While I'm on the topic of holiday badness, I have to bring up the Chronicles of Narnia exhibit at MacArthur Park Mall. Apparently this is something that Disney is sponsoring at a handful of malls around the country. I wish I could find a picture on the innerweb so you could see just how campy this is. As though going to the mall to tell Santa what you want for Christmas wasn't commercial enough, now at eight malls in the country a kid can step through a huge wardrobe and into a snowglobe that simulates what the characters in C.S. Lewis's Chonicles of Narnia experienced in his children's book series. Mall goers eventually make it to the line to see Father Christmas, where for $15 you can sit in his lap and he'll give you a snowglobe that doubles as an ad for the new Disney movie playing at the theater upstairs. Bizarre as this whole thing was, we enjoyed watching the usual array of picture posers, greed list holders and terrified crybabies line up for Santa.

This is a total non-sequitor, but according to a recent article in Norfolk's newspaper, The Virginian Pilot, 3 per cent of Virginia Beach's population is Filipino. They had an article about four thirty-something guys who sit around in a basement chewing the fat and then broadcast their discussion over the internet. They call themselves the Sini-Gang. I've never been overly concerned with Filipino-American issues, and before I read the article I might have told you that the Philipines was somewhere east of Pittsburgh, but I did visit their site and it's some pretty funny stuff. Check it out here.

Speaking of Virginia Beach, my sister invited me and Elaine to see her shop there. Karen runs a bridal boutique that specializes in gowns imported from across the pond. I promised her a plug on my blog. Clients typically make reservations for shopping and browsing so we had the place to ourselves. Of particular interest was the shop's portfolio complete with photos of local brides and debutantes. A hanger really doesn't do justice to a wedding dress.