Obligatory Thanksgiving post (also one more)

Well, actually I don't think I usually do an obligatory Thanksgiving post, but here goes.  I'm thankful that I'm not living alone on Thanksgiving as well as all the other days of the year.  The way my life was going 20+ years ago, I foresaw becoming what in the olden days was called a "confirmed bachelor" and God only knows what my life would be like now if that had happened.  This is something I think about and am thankful for every day.

I'm thankful that I have a job that I don't absolutely hate on most days.  I ran into a few people this week who remarked that I had a great job, so it gave me the opportunity to consider it afresh.  One guy even said, "Man...you got it made...walking around, listening to your tunes..."  I had my phone in my pocket playing some music at the time.  Yeah, I thought, some days are like that:  I actually get paid to walk around listening to music.  Of course, some days are not like that, but on the whole, it's pretty good.  I'm also thankful that I get two paid days off for this holiday (also, two paid days for Christmas and two paid days for New Year).  I guess I'm also thankful that I get so much time off I can sell a little of it back to the company and get a little bonus at the end of the year.

I pecan-smoked a small--3 pound--turkey breast today, but unfortunately the bottom of the fire box on my smoker has rusted out so I couldn't control the heat as is my usual wont.  I'm going to have to figure out some way to repair my smoker.  Anyway, the turkey turned out great--my son gave it his "awesome" rating, so it was okay.  So my family sat around snacking on turkey and other food items all day while watching stuff on Netflix (did I say I'm thankful for Netflix?).

I've been re-watching The X-Files.  It has been so long since I've seen any of these that I've pretty much forgotten them.  Also, I had stopped watching it back in the old days, and I've never seen either movie or any of the shows after Mulder got replaced by the Terminator guy.  I was kind of bummed recently that Netflix lost streaming rights for Full Metal Panic, an anime series that I was right in the middle of.  My wife has been blazing through Burn Notice and In Plain Sight.

I'm thankful for YouTube.  Thanks to YouTube, I have been able to listen to playlists of albums by groups that I would never be able to hear otherwise, because I just can't afford to buy all those albums.  My musical tastes and experiences have been broadening dramatically since I got high-speed internet (which I'm also thankful for).

I should also thank you to Amazon, because today I got an electronic gift card in my email for $10.41.  So I redeemed it right away.


Rattlin' Bones is from  2008, and was the first of Kasey Chambers' duet albums with her husband Shane Nicholson.  Amazon's genre tag calls it "country," and I guess that's okay, I'm not going to change it anyway, but I would call it Americana.  So...thanks, Amazon!