Blog Number 337

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

I am taking all of next week off.  That will mean that I will have 11 days off in a row (including the Thanksgiving holiday and weekends).  I don't know if I am going to make it as it is only the tail end of day 2 and I am getting a little stir crazy.  We did rediscover Uno though so we have played about 30 hands so far with many more to come I am sure.

Yesterday we started the day with a big breakfast consisting of scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, bagels with cream cheese and some blueberry maple sausage links.  I was skeptical of what these blueberry links might taste like and I can now report to you that the did not really taste like anything (including sausage).  We did manage to eat them all however.

Earlier in last week the wife had asked me if I wanted ham or turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.  I told her that I wanted a meal that I could truly be thankful for and suggested that her homemade pizza would be perfect.  This got an instantaneous yes / yes vote from the kids and just like that (I think) a Dieterman Thanksgiving tradition was born.  Throw in some barbecue chips and some soda and you have a meal that I guarantee everyone was thankful for.

Speaking of being thankful, last week while I was at the Dollar Store, I bought a 100 pack of post-it notes.  Their were 4 different colors in the pack so each of us picked a color.  We had about 10 days until Thanksgiving.  I took a jar down from the cabinet and donned it the Thankful Jar.  I explained that we were to write down something we were thankful for on our color of post-it note and place it in the Thankful Jar without showing anyone what we had written.  I also explained that if you could not spell a word then you were to do your best.  This last instruction passed over the daughter as 5 minutes later (with pencil and paper in hand) she asked, "Dad, how do you spell allowance?"  Fast forward to Thanksgiving and as we finished up our pizza, I took all the notes out of the jar and read them out loud.  We had a few laughs and a few "ahhhhhs" and then I took all of them and put them back for historical purposes (and possible bribery).

Thanksgiving night we walked down the street to the neighbors (with pumpkin gooey bars in hand) for a dessert get together.  We even got in 3 games of doubles table tennis (the wife and I won the first 2 games handily and lost the 3rd in overtime).  The menfolk watched a little football (though all the games yesterday were blowouts) while the womenfolk drank coffee.  The kids just played.  Eventually it was time for bed so we walked the 1 block home.  All in all, a great day.

I will mention that none of the thankful notes mentioned my blog (sigh).

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon