Is it worth driving the 450 miles to Benicia and San Ramon every Thanksgiving? Every year there's a turkey crisis - and it's a new one every year. There's been a fire in the oven, thermostat problems, time management challenges, endless debates over the initial turkey purchase - the list of "musts" gets longer every year - organic, humane, listened to Bach every day, vegetarian etc., etc. This year, after carting the turkey back and forth to a neighbor's oven (the hosts' oven door was broken during a Thanksgiving Eve repair job), my nephew looked at me and said, "There's really no culinary challenge with a turkey - it's just such a big thing". He's resolved that next year it'll be Cornish game hens (apparently they are au courant again). There are usually too many cooks, bumping into each other but we have a lot of fun.

The shadow Thanksgiving, the day after, is a Flip show - the Philippino side of the family. There are mobs of people, kids, dogs. The food is astonishing and non-stop, some of it ethnic but mostly just interesting things people find or have around at the moment. Lots of good wine. We drive home hoarse and happy from all the yakking. It's great.