Sunday, 27 November 2005 | Arithmetic

It was my first time cooking Thanksgiving dinner, and it went pretty well, considering. It was just me and Todd (neither of us left town and plans with friends fell through), and the only real problem we had was that we made entirely too much food. It wasn't because our methods weren't scientific, though. The way we determined how many potatoes to cook was to halve the recipe, and then to guess at what five pounds of potatoes felt like by holding the bag in one hand and Todd's cooperative 13-pound cat in the other. "I guess that feels like about 35 percent of your cat in potatoes," I said, before making a giant pot so full that it could've fed all of Brooklyn.

Dinner itself was a little anticlimactic, because after working for so long on preparations, we only spent five minutes eating, just before running out the door. We finished the day at a fancy party, where we drank wine between an original Warhol painting and an expansive view of the Hudson. I never know how I score when in a fancy atmosphere, whether my sense of displacement shows through at all. It didn't feel much like Thanksgiving, or at least what I'm used to it feeling like, but it was nice regardless. Also, I like staying in town when it's nearly empty.