Turkey in the Desert

I spent this past Thanksgiving in Phoenix visitng my sister and her boyfriend. The two of them invited the entire family (Mom, Stepdad, 5 brothers) to their place to eat turkey, watch football and relax. Oh, and to drink. A lot. It was great getting a chance to escape the gray skies of Ohio for cloudless ones of Arizona. And I guess seeing my entire family together in one place wasn't too bad either.

I flew out to Phoenix on Tuesday night, but not before switching planes in Las Vegas. I've been to Vegas once before and had a great time, which probably had a lot to do with being in the airport as little as possible. You see, the Vegas airport is an absolute hole. It's dirty, run down, and there are zero decent food stands. I had to wind up eating a pretzel dog (a hot dog wrapped inside a pretzel - brilliant!) for dinner and it cost me about nine bucks plus the Alka Selzer I wound up taking later that night. So if you ever go to Vegas, get out of that airport as fast as you can.

My brother and I flew out together so we shared a cab from the Phoenix airport to my sister's place. The rest of the family had arrived earlier that day, so we were left with the worst spots to sleep. I crashed on a paper thin mattress in the laundry room while my brother was left sleeping on some floor somewhere. I'll just make sure to send the chiropractor bill to my sister for all of the spinal adjustments I'll need.

On Wednesday, I went for a run and then toured downtown Tempe with a couple of my brothers. That night, we had dinner at a microbrewery where we kicked off the first of many drunken nights with the family. The one thing I love about my family is that nothing is off limits. Politics, sex, religion, drug use, alcohol use, run ins with the law, etc. are all fair game. Seeing as my mom and one brother are super-Republican and I'm an ultra-Democrat, it wasn't long before every single one of the aforementioned topics were brought up and debated. And by "debated" I mean "drunkenly shouted." Fortunately, all of the sharp silverware had been removed from the table so that we couldn't seriously injure each other.

After dinner, we dropped my youngest two brothers off at home and then went to some more bars in downtown Tempe. I thought the bars would've been more crowded seeing as the night before Thanksgiving is typically the busiest bar night of the year, but the college crowd must've gone home for the weekend. Way too much money later, we were cabbing it back home hoping that we didn't leave an open tab somewhere.

(This was also the night that I thought up the premise for a really good sitcom that isn't being done right now. If you work in TV and want to produce the next great American sitcom, let me know.)

Thanksgiving day was spent nursing a hangover, lying around the house, bitching about how long it was taking for dinner to be ready and watching football. My sister and brother cooked most of the meal and they did a fantastic job. I think I stopped after thirds because I still needed to save room for pie and booze. After dinner, we played a rousing game of Pictionary where I learned that it's really hard draw a picture for the word "Freedom". I wound up drawing an American flag, a soldier with a gun, Iraq, and an arrow from the American flag to Iraq. I thought it was a pretty good representation of freedom, but my family thought I was trying to draw the opening scene from "Full Metal Jacket" or something.

On Friday, the six kids went and sat for a family portrait at the Sears Portrait Studio. (That isn't even a joke. We actually did it.) My mom is really big on family photos, so instead of the six of us standing around waiting for our mom to focus her goddamn camera while we make fun of her, we went and got some professional photos taken and they actually came out pretty good. That night, we went to a Mexican restaurant where I had one of the best plates of Mexican food in my life. Good. Lord. If immigration reform means crappy, Americanized Mexican food, I might have to leave the country. Jesus, it was good.

Before flying back on Saturday, we hiked up Camelback Mountain, which is over in Scottsdale. Apparently, this is where beautiful people go to work out because 90% of the people climbing this mountain could've been models. I guess if you combine nice weather with physical activity, you get good looking people. This would explain why Cleveland is consistently one of the fattest cities in the country and the population of Phoenix looks like they just got back from a photo shoot for Fitness Magazine.

I must've brought the warm weather back with me because it was about 65 degrees and sunny on Sunday, which is unheard of in Cleveland this time of year. Global warming, schmobal warming. I'm sure it'll turn shitty again real soon, but it's nice to have extended warm weather at the end of November.

So that was my trip. I ate a lot, drank a lot, slept too little, and managed to survive my family for 4 days. If that doesn't sound like a good Thanksgiving, I don't know what does.