Thanksgiving has always been a strange holiday to me. The entire concept of the holiday seems to be centered on the overeating of not-really-that-tasty-in-the-first-place bird, and that’s about it. Sure, sure, it’s a nice time to relax with family and catch up with friends while taking a few days away from the daily grind, but why turkeys? Why cranberry sauce? But above all, why the hell was Dolly Parton pulled out from under her bridge to perform for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade?

Won’t somebody please think of the millions of children watching this parade and waiting innocently for a giant Shrek balloon to come bouncing across their television screen? I mean, I loved ‘9 to 5’ just as much as any budding ‘mo back in the day but… Gurl looked terrifying. And where her Chia pets always so.. well-watered?

I arrived in Lake Geneva from Madison on Wednesday evening, and after checking in with the folks, met a dude from Myspace for coffee, followed by a movie — ‘Hitman.’ The film was fairly pedestrian all around and probably not worth the $8, though I enjoyed the Mila Jovovich-esque slutty Russian character. Driving home that night, snow flurries steadily fell and it was quite a beautiful night in combination with the nearly full moon.

The next day was family time, and I spent much of it feigning interest in football. I think that will always be something that I just don’t “get.” As for the dude, we met again on Friday and made out in his mother’s basement for a few hours while listening to Christmas music on the radio. Oh, the joys of feeling seventeen all over again. The highlight of the evening had to have been when said bachelor informed me that his mother wasn’t all that comfortable with her son dating men, so “if [I] could say as little as possible when meeting her, that would be great.” Because, ya know, my voice emits a low frequency of gay waves that only mothers and some breeds of dog can detect. As it turned out, I chatted Mama up quite a bit before leaving.. Joe 1, Socially constructed homophobia 0.

Fast forward to Saturday evening and I was back in Madison, drinking pinot grigio out of single-serve, Hi-C-esque boxes with a klan of my favorite lesbians before hitting up Genna’s and Shamrock. The adult juicebox, at last.. thank you, Target. It was a perfect way to bring the weekend to a close.