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Thankgiving 2025
Thursday, November 27 2025
Preparations continued today for the Thanksgiving meal we'd be hosting. After our friends Cathy and Roy (the falafel people) bailed on us, we were down to an attendance of seven people: me, Gretchen, her two parents, Colleen (one of the owners of a vegan bakery in New Paltz), and our neighbor A and her boyfriend Jamie. I mostly stayed away from the kitchen while Gretchen and her parents did various things. At some point I even went out and brought back yet another backpack of dry sugar maple.
Our gathering began at around 3:00pm when Colleen arrived. A and J were somewhat later. We did the usual crackers & dips thing in the living room in front of an unusually hot fire as temperatures in the room climbed into the 80s Fahrenheit. (They peaked near 90 at some point later during dinner when we were in the cooler dining area.) There was wine, but three of us (Gretchen, her mother, and Colleen) weren't drinking any.
The meal itself began with a chestnut mushroom soup, which is sort of a tradition at this point, and then moved on to a variety of things, none of which really spoke to me (because Thanksgiving food isn't really my thing). The thing I liked the most was probably the stuffing that A had brought, and it was mostly just chunks of bread, though it was good with gravy. I also liked the lemon potatoes okay, though the vegan ceviche was really disappointing, something Gretchen agreed with me on. There was a sort of tofu-heavy quiche containing entire halved onions that I found kind of disgusting, and it was the closest thing we had to a big chunk of protein.
Dinner conversation was full of laughter, as several people (particularly A's boyfriend J) are clever and have great comic timing. For being an old fart, Gretchen's father is also hilarious at times, though he leans a little too heavily on groan-inducing puns.
At some point in the discussion, Colleen was talking about a television show about a woman who swims with great white sharks. As she was trying to remember the name of the show, I offered "Shark Tank," which then took us down a rabbit hole of discussion of the various business ideas we've seen on that.
After everyone left, I dedicated myself to cleaning the kitchen (mostly because I can't stand to watch how wasteful Gretchen's parents are with our scarce hot water resources). As I did so, I was discussing aritificial intelligence with Gretchen's father, a topic he seems to delight in talking with me about, mostly because nobody in his normal social circles is informed enough on the subject to provide any insights. My take on AI these days is that it is snuffing out professional growth among humans, meaning that humans with advanced skills will become increasingly scarce over the coming years even while AI fails to replace them.
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