statement of purpose update:  it continues to elude me.

paper grading update:  50% done.  I now have a grading "metric".  This includes a base score of 40 points (out of 100) for turning the paper in.  I'm so glad it's the last one

thanksgiving update: 

THE MENU IN ALL OF ITS GLORY

dinner:

• Turkey (Neil bought a 20 pound turkey. Yep. It will be injected with approximately a pound of butter over the course of the day)
• Traditional Stuffing (he does a traditional with the turkey bits, celery, onions & bread, and there's both "in turkey" and "in caserole" for those who are afraid of in turkey stuffing)
• Vegetarian Mushroom Bread Pudding Stuffing (with mushrooms & walnuts)
• Broccoli Casserole (also veggie - it's basically cheese & noodles & mushroom soup)
• Mashed Potatoes
  
• Honey carrots (Neil's recipe, they're steamed and then tossed in butter & honey)
• Cranberry sauce (My recipe, there's a little dash of cinnamon)
• bread rolls
  

for dessert:

• homemade cinnamon icecream (Neil made from scratch, with real vanilla from the bean, mmmm)
• ginger cookies
• cinnamon & sugar pecans (Neil's making them right now - the house smells like warm sugary pecans)
• cheesecake
• pie
  

for drinking:

• boujelias nouveau
• various & assorted white wines from the wine rack
• coke & cherry coke
• coffee

I can't decide if I want to do munchies before the feast or not.  The problem is that Neil will have been cooking all day, D & I will have been cooking off an on between the cleaning, and it gets you hungry for things like lunch, even though you skip it because you know that dinner is going to be massive.  We'll see.