Thanksgiving Dinner

How am I celebrating Thanksgiving this year? Why, the traditional way of course: re-arranging the office furniture. We seem to be host to the GA summit this weekend; all the directors from all the BDP offices worldwide are meeting here to have a look around and probably hit Temple Bar pretty hard (research!) before going back home to espouse propoganda. So our office is cleaning up. The newly hired Interior Designer was given the job of sprucing the joint up only to find that everyone has an opinion, none of them good. Poor girl. Welcome aboard, we think your work is crap. I've been using my 6 years of higher education to great advantage by assuring that the plants are turned fullest side out, that the conference tables have matching chairs and by stuffing the leftover crap, but which I mean office furniture hand-me-downs, into the boiler room. It's been great fun. Lunch rolled around, so I suggested to Joe we go to a nearby restaurant so I could get some roast bird. I'm not holding out for turkey, but roast bird of some form will be eaten today. He very kindly sent me a Happy Thanksgiving greeting this morning when I arrived. It's nice to know that everyone knows our holidays even if they don't celebrate them. Turkey was on the menu and I asked for it. Chef duly cut 2 succulent slices of roasted turkey breast, lovingly spooned cranberry relish alongside the mashed potatoes (it is Ireland after all) and then proceeded to drown the turkey and cranberry in beef gravy. Nothing on the potatoes. I requested some, whereby he further drowned my plate in beef gravy. So basically my Thanksgiving meal consitsted of Roast turkey with cranberry relish, tomato and feta salad, mashed potatoes and lots of beef gravy. Yum... The only thing that could have made it less traditional would have been for me to fail stopping him from slapping boiled, shredded cabbage on the plate. Ah, the joys of living abroad.