Giant Floating Bullwinkle ...

... in the thirty years that I've been alive, this is the second year that I have spent it WITHOUT my mother and father and older brother and too much Tecate. Last year, as the link will attest to, I deeply mourned the loss of this tradition. This year, however, I'm less mournful and more excited to be starting my own family traditions and passing on some from my crazy mexican family to my crazy Galindo family.

In a few minutes Emerald and I will sit on the couch and watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. My dad and I used to watch that together. Back when I was a little wetbackling it started at 6am, so you had to wake up at 5:45am to be ready. Now there's the Today Show beforehand and it starts at 9am. Other than that very little has changed. There's still the first hour dedicated to current broadway shows. I loved that as theater fag high schooler but now I'm just excited to see theater chicks in spandex and short skirts in 20-degree weather freezing their asses off. I'm hoping, though, I get to see a peak of Young Frankenstein. And of course there's Bullwinkle and Bart Simpson. Emerald likes the singers on strange floats. And she's hoping that Word Girl is there. I'll let you know.

After that we're gonna see a movie, all of us together, Probably Enchanted. Either that or Saw IV, something the whole family can share. And then there's dinner with Natasha's family which, because they're white, will probably happen around six and not nine or ten like we USED to do it. There'll probably be yelling and maybe a fight, not like the Thanksgivings that my family and I used to share. Cops were never called to my family's thanksgiving dinner. It's a different world for me and I'm not 100% used to it. All I know is I'll definitely be holding on to my OWN tradition ...

I'll be bringing the squeeze cheese.