Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving morning dawned bright and cold!  First thing to do?  Thaw out the goldfish.

Best way to do this is set a pan of boiling water on the
ice.  That way it just melts through the surface crust
without breaking the ice, which can hurt the fish.

Then off to the box for an early morning workout:  max effort bench press, followed by "Jackie" (100 meter row, 50 thrusters and 30 pull-ups for time).  Bench press is not my forte, but I kind of rocked Jackie.

I may or  may not have landed a 45-pound barbell
on my forehead during one of those 50 thrusters.

Then back to my apartment . . . and back to work.

Said the client:  "I don't expect you to work all day on Thanksgiving."

At 4:00pm I put away my contracts, called my mother as I packed up the little Mexican chocolate pots de creme that I made last night (with an extra scoop of chili powder!), and then walked over to Jeff and Paige's apartment for Thanksgiving dinner.

There were 7 cups originally, but I had to taste one this morning.

Dinner was delicious (oh man, the stuffing! those dinner rolls!!) and it was fun to hang out with Jeff and Paige and their other guests, Chris, Rebecca and, um, David?  It was the best sort of dinner party -- everyone was super smart and interesting, and the conversation flowed easily from literature to educational theory, international nuclear politics to the advisability of telling one's four-year-old that Care Bears are not cool, legal issues to the casting choices in Twilight and The Hunger Games, and, perhaps most pressingly, whether it was really a good idea to play "rhinoceros" in the hallway with the 18-month-old (as you may have guessed, the group consisted of three lawyers, a full-time mom, a fiction writer, a nuclear physicist and five children under the age of 5).

Was it the worst Thanksgiving ever?  No, that title goes to the Thanksgiving I spent by myself in Cancun.  Was it the best Thanksgiving ever?  Not that, either.  I would rather have been with family.  Or in Paris with Amanda.  So it was somewhere in between.  And I'm thankful for that.

I'm thankful for a healthy body and a good mind; a job that's exciting, intellectually challenging, and which I'm good at; a family whom I love and who loves me; good friends; and all the other blessings that so richly fill my life.

Happy Thanksgiving!