My Thanksgiving Prediction

Tomorrow’s the big day. In the order of importance, Thanksgiving is about:

— Food, and lots of it. I’m partial to turkey, dressing and lots of mashed potatoes and gravy. I can skip the pies, because by the time dessert rolls around, I’m rolling around, too. Besides, we can save the pies for some other time.

— Family. This is one of those holidays devoted almost exclusively to hanging out with relatives and friends. We usually have a fair size corps of relatives turn up. Added to a random sampling of friends, it makes for an industrial strength gabfest.

— Rain. This is our eighth Thanksgiving in beautiful Oregon, and the lone constant has been the rain every Thanksgiving. It’s not that I mind. First of all, it’s Oregon, and it’s fall. That doesn’t exactly conjure up visions of sunny and 70, does it?

Second, it’s not like I’m going to run around outside on Thanksgiving. As I said, my main interest on a holiday like this involves food. Hey, it can rain all day and I wouldn’t care. I probably wouldn’t even notice.

The forecast for Thanksgiving is, and I quote: “mostly sunny.”

Ha! If some Doppler radar-loving weather geek thinks it won’t rain Thursday, then he’s a few satellite photos short of a forecast.

Everyone knows it rains here on Thanksgiving. It’s tradition. It’s like turkey, dressing, and hearing all of those time-worn family stories that only surface at the Thanksgiving dinner table.

In fact, I don’t know what it would be like without rain on Thanksgiving. I’m sure my wife would bug me to take a walk with her or something equally silly.

Me? Exercise on the most decadent day of the year? If it involves more than a knife and fork, I’m not interested.

Any potential for sunshine would only distract me from the business at hand.

After a day dedicated to chowing down, I look forward to spending Friday doing something worthwhile and that will get me out of the house.

Like wine-tasting. For the past few years, my wife and I have Shanghaied unsuspecting friends and relatives and loaded them into the back of the mini-van for a day of cruising vineyards.

We try to go to different ones each year. Seeing as how there are about 42 billion vineyards in Oregon, that’s not hard to do.

Some are fancy; others are modest. Some have a full lunch laid out to go with the wine-tasting; others have wine-only tastings.

I’m not a wine expert. Far from it. I couldn’t tell a pinot noir from a merlot. In fact, I usually take a couple of sips of wine and I’m done for the day. That makes me the designated driver, which is fine with me.

It’s almost as much fun as Thursday’s festivities. We get another massive dose of chit-chat under our belts, buy a few bottles of wine and have a ton of fun.

In one very important way, though, it’s even better than Thanksgiving.

I don’t have to do the dishes.