Brian Bristol wrapped up his Thanksgiving just after midnight, fixing a backed-up sink that flooded a Martinez apartment.
Now seven hours later, he's at the Concord Roto-Rooter, packing a plunger and tools for his busiest day of the year.
Calling plumbers to unclog sinks is a Thanksgiving tradition dating back to some time after Squanto and the Pilgrims.
"For some reason, we all go brain dead when making the Thanksgiving dinner and think everything goes down the drain," said Mark Petersen, owner of American Plumbing in Antioch.
"Everybody just tries to make it through the holiday, and then they have work off on Friday and bombard our answering machine with calls."
Mike Green couldn't use his sink Friday morning. A leftover pot of mashed potatoes and about a dozen other dirty dishes lined his kitchen counter.
Green and his wife immediately gave thanks when Bristol rolled up to their Walnut Creek home.
After running a "snake" through the drainage line, the plumber found celery backed up through a pipe connected with Green's bathtub.
"Any stringy foods will cause problems," said Bristol, a tall, bearded man who, for the record, does not have sagging pants.
"Artichokes, celery, corn husks are all bad. I had one Thanksgiving where somebody put a whole bag of rice down their line. People don't know this, but rice turns to paste and it's really hard to clean out."
Potato peels are still the No. 1 drain stopper, plumbers say.
Those pesky skins turned out to be the culprit at Sidney Corbett's house in Martinez.
After a meal with her husband, Corbett started cleaning dishes and noticed her wash tub floating in the sink. With plunger in hand, Thomas Corbett unsuccessfully tried to fix the sink.
"I told him, 'Let's just have a glass of wine and worry about it tomorrow,'" Sidney Corbett said.
The Corbetts were pretty easygoing about their plumbing problems. But sometimes the dynamic of having so many relatives and in-laws over requires blame to be assessed.
"When we come, there is always that argument of who caused the problem," said Dave Ferguson, who owns the Pleasanton Mr. Rooter. "One person will always say, 'I told you so.'"
As people prepare their holiday feasts, Ferguson offers this bit of advice: Your garbage disposal is not a trash can.
"Paper towels, chunks of meat, grease -- people put the strangest things down drains," he said.
And that includes expensive items, proving diamonds may not always be forever.
"A lot of women or men, before doing the dishes, put their wedding bands on the window sill above the sink," he said. "They've got the disposal on, they're cleaning around and -- boom -- there goes their ring down the drain."