Thanksgiving is my least favorite holiday.

I don’t like turkey. (Yes, it’s OK to gasp at that, and I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m not the only person out there who doesn’t like turkey.) I don’t like most of the trimmings that go along with a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Stuffing? No thanks. I’ve even been talked about on the How Stuff Works podcast during “Listener Mail” time because of my turkey loathing. I usually end up in one of two situations, neither of which are good:

1. Eat only mashed potatoes and rolls for dinner. Maybe sweet potatoes if there are some, but generally, the potatoes and rolls are the only bits of the traditional Thanksgiving dinner that are remotely palatable to me. This isn’t a good dinner and it’s not super tasty.
2. Eat a one-off meal totally different from everyone else. This is bad in a different way. It means I’m eating something I like, but it also means I get to - yet again, and many times to the same people - explain why I’m eating something different. Not just a pain in the ass, but psychologically troubling as I get the looks and questions from around the table.

The last few years my family and I have gone to a buffet for Thanksgiving so they can have their turkey, but there are plenty of other things to eat and no one really notices because, well, it’s a buffet. This year, due to some scheduling trouble and other circumstances, that didn’t happen and it would have ended up being one of the above two situations. Again. I’m tired of that, so this year Jenn and I got together with a couple of friends… and some friends of friends… and their families… and had dinner with them.

While I am grateful to have met some very nice new friends and have been invited into their home for a meal of tasty shrimp scampi… it ended up being scenario #2 as mentioned above, which is not quite what I thought I was getting into. Again, no reflection on our friends, as they were wonderful and hospitable.

I think next year I’m just boycotting the whole Thanksgiving thing. It would be different if my family lived more than about 45 minutes away and I didn’t see them all the time, but they do, and I do, so the only real value Thanksgiving has is the dinner, which is the bit I’m not interested in.

The holiday weekend got a little better when we went to see Ninja Assassin. Great fight scenes and a little over-the-top gore never hurt anyone. It was only OK, as I wish the actual plot bits didn’t seem so… flat… but it was fun and nothing says ‘Thanksgiving’ like people getting their asses kicked.

The rest of the long weekend was spent playing a little Xbox 360, getting stuff done around the house, and generally relaxing, which always makes for a nice time. It looks like next weekend we’ll be decorating the house for Christmas, which should be fun.