Thanksgiving preparations

Right now I'm hoping to have my son for Thanksgiving, but as of this moment I'm not sure if thats possible.  He has wrestling coming up, although I'm not sure if they have meets that weekend or not.  If they have meets then its off; I don't want him to miss any matches his senior year.  If he doesn't have any meets that weekend then I still have to work around getting him up here.  Basically he needs someone to drive him the 35 minutes to the train station, but it might be tricky because the family he's staying with are driving Wednesday night to pick up their son from college, and I certainly would not ask them to put that off to drive my son.  Although now that I think about it, the trip to the station may be on the way.  I have to call this lady up in a bit to figure this out.  Plus this technically isn't my year for Thanksgiving, its his mother's, but given her actions this past year she's out of the holiday rotation unless Billy wants to visit with her and he's already called me and told me he'd like to spend Thanksgiving with me if possible.  But I won't have him Christmas or New Year's because he will have wrestling tournaments over that period, so I'm really hoping Thanksgiving pans out.

Anyway, should I have my son for Thanksgiving I have to come up with plans for a meal.   3 years ago I considered cooking a turkey and making an entire meal for the 2 of us.  I chickened out (get it?) and decided to go with one of those pre-made meals sold at grocery stores.  I went with the one from Meijer.  Big mistake.  I wound up with that bird in the oven for almost as long as I would've had I prepared it from the beginning, and I wound up having to make all the sides since they neglected to mention in the meal description that the mashed potatoes and stuffing were basically instant and had to be cooked.  So in short it sucked and I won't do it again.  5 years ago we talked it over and opted for the Chinese buffet.  It was different, and I had stopped at the store before hand to pick up stuff for "leftover" type sandwiches later in the day.  Last year we did takeout from Famous Dave's barbecue, and to be honest after talking with my son thats the front-runner for Thanksgiving dinner this year.  We also did this for Christmas dinner 2 years ago.  A couple slabs of ribs, a couple pounds of rib tips, a pound of brisket and a shitload of their jalapeno mac & cheese.  Btw, if you've never had their jalapeno mac & cheese you really ought to, its spectacular.  As are their barbecue chicken nachos that we decided to order for dinner Wednesday night (when we picked up the rest of the stuff).  Hah, if we do this I may not do any cheat meals the entire month up to Thanksgiving just so I can alleviate some of the guilt!

Speaking of the weight loss I'm down just about 90 pounds this year, and almost 40 from when I started working out in July.  I had originally set a goal for the end of the year thats 20 pounds away from where I am now so I don't think I'll make it.  But this is one of those situations where no matter where I wind up between this weight and that weight I still come out ahead.