Our First Thanksgiving With Friends Went Very Well!

Captions: 1. On left, our oldest, son Jesse Lee Conzemius, who is now 35 and living with his girlfriend, Rachel Hileman (on right), in Charlotte, NC. Jesse had to work at Best Buy till 1:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving. 2. On left, our youngest, daughter Sarah Rose Quinn, who is 29 and living in Davenport, IA with her husband, Matt Quinn, on right. Matt & Sarah visited his parents for Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania (they alternate with us).

Facing a Thanksgiving without either of our grown children or their partners, I looked forward to a bleak holiday, but it was not to be! Two delightful friends we met at the Stone Mill Inn on a bike trip to the Root River Trail in Lanesboro, Minnesota invited us to dine with them and another friend at the Vue Rooftop Restaurant on the 12th floor of the Hilton Garden Inn. Thank goodness, the Vue served Thanksgiving dinner, and it was delicious. I wish I could cook turkey so succulent.

I've been enjoying Lud Gutmann's delightful book of short stories, "The Sunken Fang Society," and have really thrived in his and wife Mary's company, so I knew I'd have fun. Mike Shy joined us and asked my husband Jim a lot of questions about Iowa City floods and how you get around neighborhoods in times of flooding. I shared that we had a canoe in the streets of our neighborhood in the flood of 1993. You can't be too careful who you share that information with. I shared that bit of news with a concerned neighbor and he immediately moved himself and his family to higher ground. Since then, they've moved again to yet higher ground but still in Iowa City.

No one dining with us at the Vue Rooftop on Thanksgiving lives in a floodplain except us.

Lud asked us if we wanted two free football tickets and Jim made me make the decision as to whether to accept them.

"You're the boss!" I protested, knowing he was the bigger football fan of the two of us.

"No, you're the boss," he said with emphasis. Heavy rain was predicted for Friday and we knew it would be cold. I gratefully accepted the tickets despite the weather forecast because I wanted to fill up our weekend with as many new adventures as possible. It had been 16 or 17 years since we'd been to a football game. When we were young and childless we had season tickets, but with two full-time jobs, we decided that going to games took too much time away from our children.

So Friday we sat in seats that we thought were the right ones. After I left to use the restroom, I came back to section 107, row 42, seat 16, and... no Jim in seat 17. Where was he? No darling little 18-month-old or two-year-old sleeping on his daddy's shoulder in the row ahead of us.

Jim got my message to meet him at section 107, row 42, seat 17, but since he was sure he was in the correct seat, he stayed put. I couldn't figure out where we had been sitting before, so I stayed put too and hoped he'd join me.

Iowa beat Nebraska with a successful field goal by Hawkeye kicker Miguel Recenos, which made the 28-28 score 31-28. Nobody wanted to go into overtime. Fans were groaning with each time-out and each commercial time-out. The cold rain, which held off for most of the game, was starting to really come down and it penetrated my Mad Bomber hat. My wool/silk lace shawl was wet for the first time since I did whatever it is you do after you finish knitting something. (You wet it, stomp on it after putting it between two towels, and then pin it on the sofa to dry it to suit.) I forget the word. I've always wanted to knit lace, and I carefully hung the "pebble-beach" shawl on a chair to dry as soon as I got home.

After the game I stood by the wall with a few other lost souls at Kinnick hoping Jim would spot me. He didn't. Finally I walked to Gate K. He turned around and we were face to face. Well, hello there! Thank God we found each other! Where have you been?!

"Why, I've been where you should have been."

We thought about arguing, but it was such a waste of time, we decided not to.

We walked hand in hand all the way from Kinnick Stadium to the Vue Rooftop at 328 South Clinton Street downtown. Why? Because the line of people waiting for the Cambuses was at least a quarter mile long. Sure enough, we got downtown at the same time as one of the Cambuses.

After a late lunch/early supper we went home and had a piece of the pumpkin pie with whipped cream that Jim asked me to make. Then we watched the conclusion of a BBC "Midsomer Murders" episode on Iowa Public Television and went to bed with our kitty Chloe. It's difficult to read anything with an affectionate cat who loves bedtime. She nudges my elbow as I try to finish Lud's book (I've read several of his stories multiple times) until I turn out my book light and cuddle with her under the covers.