Happy Thanksgiving

I hope that everyone had a happy and safe Thanksgiving. Rachel and I slept in most of the day. Around noon, we decided to get up and do something. We met Rachel’s mom, brother, and grandmother at local restaurant. I had their special Thanksgiving buffet dinner. It included turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, macaroni salad, ham, garlic sausage, turkey soup, green salad, and pumpkin cake. The food was extremely filling. I probably will end up skipping dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast.

After lunch, Rachel and I headed to Lakeview Park. We noticed that they had put up some Christmas decorations. In addition, we noticed that the water was extremely choppy. We decided to go down to the beach and take some pictures.

I think that is the first time in my life that I have walked on frozen sand. Because of the spray from the lake, the driftwood and the trees on the jetty had icicles. We only took a handful of pictures. The wind was making it hard to walk and even breathe. I had to face away from the wind before I was able to get a proper breath. Twenty degrees was cold enough, but the wind chill made it feel as one below zero.

Last night was not as windy, but we got our first major snow of the season. In the evening I had to shovel once. A few hours later, I had to shovel again for when Rachel came home. Of course, a few hours after she got home, the temperature warmed up to forty. It snow changed to rain, and most of the snow melted away. Unfortunately, since it went back below freezing at night, everything was frozen over. It took several minutes to scrape the ice off our vehicle this morning. It took several more minutes to get the wipers unstuck. The windows did not get unstuck until after we got back home. I even had problems getting in. I could not open the door at first; I thought Rachel had locked it. It was just frozen shut.

Even with built-in fur coats, we like to give our dogs some extra protection in the extreme cold. So, all of the dogs have sweaters. Kara’s sweater did not fit very well this year. It was too tight. While I am happy that she is at a proper weight now, I did not want her to be the only one without a sweater. Fortunately, when we bought sweaters for Kara and Kelly, we bought two for each. Now, Kara is wearing one of Kelly’s. They look cute in their sweaters, but not for too long. While Emily could wear hers all day, Kara and Kelly like to slip out of theirs. The other day I noticed that Kara was no longer wearing hers and Kelly had hers around her waist.

Tagline for today: “I saw a sign at a gas station. It said ‘help wanted’. There was another sign below it that said ‘self service’. So I hired myself. Then I made myself the boss. I gave myself a raise. I paid myself. Then I quit.” - Steven Wright