I reached my 50,000 words for Nanowrimo at about 11:30 yesterday morning. Richard got to his about an hour or so after that. So now we are both at least done with Nano, if not necessarily done with the actual stories themselves. Phew.

After Richard managed to hit his 50,000 words, we loaded up the car, did a last minute run around the house filling food / water bowls and scooping litter boxes and telling all the cats goodbye (naturally none of them cared, since they are cats) and then we headed off to Campbell for Thanksgiving dinner. I know we’ve driven down there on Thanksgiving day before but maybe we just headed out earlier, because I don’t ever remember the traffic being quite that horrible. After it took us a bit less than an hour to inch our way from Sacramento to Davis (a trip which would normally take about 15 minutes), we decided that hey, we have this nifty GPS device, and we know there are ways to at least get to Fairfield via the back roads, so why not see if it could give us a detour.

Note to anyone pondering doing this in the future. While yes, it was definitely off the freeway and there was no traffic on the route, meandering around the windy, hilly roads in Napa does not really classify as an acceptable detour to try to get from Sacramento to the Bay area. On the plus side, considering the traffic, I’m not sure the trip took us any more time than it would have done if we’d stuck it out on the freeway, but at least on the freeway, I might not have spent half the ride feeling vaguely nauseous (see earlier reference to windy hilly roads – ugh).

We made it down there, eventually, and still had an hour or two to sit and chat with the family before dinner was ready. It was a small group this year – one of the usually families that attend has been busily passing the flu around from person to person so they decided to stay home. There was turkey and stuffing and 3 or 4 different types of cranberry sauce, peas, rolls, mashed potatoes, a sweet potato casserole thing that was covered in buttery hazelnut streusel and which I am sure was not remotely good for anyone (but it was SO GOOD). And then later, after Richard’s mom and youngest sister introduced us to the funny that is Eddie Izzard, there was cake and pie.

Today started off with the traditional post-Thanksgiving breakfast out, which included a lot of desperately needed coffee, and then we all headed off to the Dickens Fair. Richard’s sister and parents have gone before, but this was the first time for Richard and I. It’s pretty much exactly the same idea as the Renaissance Faire, except obviously based on a different time period. Lots of people dress up in period garb, and there are singers and dancers and various forms of entertainment in the style of the day. Thankfully, considering the rain that had begun to fall, the Dickens Fair is held inside the Cow Palace, safe from the elements.

It was fun to wander around, watching shows, window shopping at all the booths, running into friends who worked there, listening to ‘Rudyard Kipling’ do a dramatic reading of “The Elephant’s Child”, and so on. But by about 1 or so everyone was starting to look pretty worn out, so there were hugs and goodbyes and we set back off for home.

This time there was absolutely no traffic (of course). There was a rather exciting sudden downpour en route, but luckily it happened just after we’d pulled off and run into a restaurant to get some (late) lunch, and by the time we were done eating, the rain has faded back to a mere drizzle again.

We made it home and came inside, and the cats all looked up like “oh, were you gone?” and so far we haven’t found any evidence that they even noticed our absence (if it had been more than 48 hours, however, I am sure something would have been shredded). Richard settled in to do some writing, and I sliced up some pumpkin bread and headed off to a friend’s house for another evening of watching Buffy and knitting and hanging out. We hand-picked some of our favorite episodes (“Once More With Feeling” and “Tabula Rasa”), and that was fun, since I haven’t seen those in years. One of the other Buffy marathon regulars came by with her brand new little baby boy, so we all got to take turns passing him around and cooing over him. In general, it was a wonderful way to wile away a few hours, and after all the hectic of writing and driving and everything else these past few days, it was just what I needed.