Thanksgiving is always a busy time, but an enjoyable one. We had Thanksgiving dinner at David & Karen’s house, a total of 11 people, a nice size which could have been unwieldy if both their entire families had attended (which would have swollen the size to 30 people total). I enjoyed talking to David’s brother-in-law Marty who has many of the same interests as I do, but whom I see at most once per year.

I did no shopping on Black Friday, only leaving the house for a haircut in the morning, and lunch at Jefferson Diner with Kate’s family, then spending the rest of the day writing college recommendations (which I finished this morning) and grading my AP Calculus test. After I return from the YMCA this afternoon, I’ll grade my Honors Algebra 2 tests tonight and tomorrow.

Jean and I have enjoyed watching the New Jersey Nets basketball ever since they traded for Jason Kidd early in the decade and immediately became a winning team. That has changed drastically this year after they traded away their best player Vince Carter for “salary cap space” at the end of this season, so they can pursue some of the superstar free agents who will be available then. While the team does have some very talented young players (most impressively center Brook Lopez and point guard Devon Harris, but also shooting guards Chris Douglas-Roberts and Courtney Lee and swingman Terence Williams), they have been bitten both by numerous injuries (at one point Lopez was the only starter actually playing) and inexperience, so that their season’s record so far is 0-16. That’s right: they are winless after 16 games. That kind of puts a damper on watching their games.

Currently reading: I enjoy science fiction magazines from the 1950s-1970s, so I have begun reading an Arthur C. Clarke young-adult novel People of the Sea (which became Dolphin Island in book form) which was serialized in the first two issues of Worlds of Tomorrow magazine in 1963, a short-lived magazine which was underrated in the shadow of its more-popular stablemates Galaxy and Worlds of IF. Good stuff.