Thanksgiving morning is typically a game of hurry up and wait.
You stuff the bird, set the table, and then get reacquainted
with your parents' couch. Or in your younger and less
responsible years, you sleep off a long night at the local bars.
But at 10 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day 2005, someone rang the
doorbell at my parents' place in Princeton, New Jersey. I pulled
on clothes to see who the hell it was before heading back to
bed. Standing on the front porch was my dad's friend, and in his
arms were two dozen unshucked oysters and two bottles of
champagne.  "I brought breakfast," he said. "Let me in."  My mom
was at my aunt's house making dinner, so I woke up my brother
and some friends who had crashed at our place after last call. I
hunted up a shucking knife (yeah, we keep one handy); my dad
mixed up a simple mignonette. People were asking about Advil
when I handed them champagne, but twenty minutes later we were
slurping down Malpeques and popping bottle number two. "Hey,"
someone said, "let's do this every y