Festive

I'm going to roast a turkey this year for Thanksgiving dinner.

The way people talk, roasting a turkey is akin to building a rocket ship.

Given that I've never roasted a turkey before, and with all this preconceived notions of turkey roasting nightmares (a la Pieces of April), I am a bit worried and curious about how my version of the Thanksgiving dinner turkey will turn out.

But I've roasted at least several dozen chickens in my lifetime, and each one had turned out well... So I'm pretty confident that this oversized chicken will turn out fine. How hard could it be.

As I was preparing the brine that my turkey will marinate in overnight, my pager goes off:


Me: Hello, I'm returning a page...

Person That Paged Me: Hey! This is Dr. Staff, how are you?

It's one of the senior staff physicians at work.

Me: I'm OK. What's up, sir?

Dr. Staff: Well, I'm calling to see what your plans were for Thanksgiving. I know you're probably not going to be able to make it out of town to visit your folks, so my wife and I wanted to invite you to our house to join us for Thanksgiving dinner.

Me: Wow, that sounds great! But Nathalie and I had planned to celebrate Thanksgiving alone this year. Kind of like a couples thing, and we've actually made preparations for dinner. Thanks so much for your generous offer, sir.

Dr. Staff: OK, well that sounds fun, too. Good luck with dinner. But if your turkey doesn't turn out right, or if you burn your house down, you're always welcome to come to my house.

Me: Sure, that sounds great...

Wait, what? Burn my house down? What the hell does he think I'm going to be doing?