In which I am a Grinch about Thanksgiving

Can I do that?  Even without an animated Dr. Seuss character?  Or a Charles Dickens novel?  It's not that there's anything wrong with Thanksgiving per se, (well, actually there is, ask the Native Americans) it's just that it always seems to fall at an academically inconvenient time.  I am invited to a Thanksgiving gathering in town with a bunch of PCVs, former PCVs, and ex-pats today, and I have been asked, and agreed, to supply pumpkin pies.  Which I had planned to actually be sweet potato pies because pumpkins aren't in season and sweet potatoes are the same thing but sweeter and don't have to be hacked apart with a machete, which is definitely a plus.  Americans with access to genetically engineered pumpkins that can be sawed through with an ordinary kitchen knife are lucky.  The entire reason I originally bought a machete, in fact, is because nothing less would open the last pumpkins I dealt with, when I made pumpkin wine (don't bother, such a wine is not good enough to be worth the effort).  Which is why I prefer baking with sweet potato, the availability of which turned out to be an unwarranted assumption.   After verifying the nonexistence of sweet potatoes at four different markets, feeling irritated and cranky and wishing I could just drive to a grocery store and be done with it, the sweet lady organizing Thanksgiving and I decided that my contribution could be the much less exciting cornbread.  Corn flour I can just buy anywhere, though there is always a danger when I have to buy corn flour and wheat flour at the same time, because when they both come in plastic bags, I can't tell them apart.  So this is much less work and time, which is good, since I already feel guilty about choosing a nice long meal over doing work, of which I have a lot.  The downside to students who care enough to do homework is that I am morally obligated to grade it.  I am also feeling guilty for skipping student presentations on their upcoming final projects.  I was going to attend, but then an hour after the scheduled time it still hadn't started, and I had other things to do, and besides I support my students by being available to answer questions and having lectures ready to be lectured on time.   Also holding extra classes on request.   Besides which, I show up at their computer club meetings, which last two hours, and I smile and look supportive.  So yeah, I really should be grading rather than worrying about Thanksgiving.  And going to presentations rather than shopping for Thanksgiving ingredients that didn't exist.  Overall, just grump.