An Incomprehensive List of What I'm Thankful for This Holiday Season, or I Hope John Doesn't Mind that I Used My Email to Him as a Blog Post.

in honor of the very blessed holiday that's coming up on thursday, i will now recount what exactly i'm thankful for, in no particular order:

1. challenges: hell, how would I define myself without 'em?
2. family: hell, how would i define myself without 'em?
   
3. frank-dog: even though my mom just told me he chewed my dining room table that is stored at their house
   
4. my desire to question everything: see "challenges"
5. my friends: genevieve bovee? keri smith? lexia snow? sara snow? sarah hill? sarah day? shan mukhtar? you? god, i can't think of a life without these folks.
   
6. new york: best time of my life; can never be recreated.
7. my ability to put a nostalgic, sentimental spin on my past.
   
8. saul bellow: how does he create such atmosphere in a couple of sentences?
9. the clash, specifically "guns of brixton": never fails to get me motivated to move my ass.
   
10. the sun: i never knew how much i relied on it until i moved to a place where it rises at 9AM and sets at 4PM (if it ever shows up in the first place).
11. my education: though i'm paying for it dearly, i can pick apart literature (and life) with the best of 'em.
12. your vegetarian lasgana: what i wouldn't do for even a small plate of that right now.
13. dreams: keep me putting one foot in front of the other. even though right now it feels like i'm putting one foot behind the other.
14. children: uncensored emotions. life before calculation and manipulation = perfection.

Thanksgiving, My Style.

Okay, so "my style" is basically my mom's style and my grandma's style. But I cooked a Thanksgiving dinner last Thursday for the family I'm staying with. Yeah, it was a week early, and it wasn't quite the same as chillin' and watching SEC football and the Macy's Parade, but it was nice. And everything turned out pretty well. Here's proof:




I also cooked a pretty kick-ass turkey, but I didn't get a photo of it until after it was carved up. And a photo of a carved up bird carcass? Not a wonderful image.

Scottish Highlands and the Isle of Skye

(Finally, huh?)

I don't know how many photos of landscapes you can stomach before you become completely bored (no matter how awesome the scenery is), but I took these at the beginning of the trip, and before I knew people enough to take photos of them, my camera died. (And of course I forgot the battery recharger.) So here are photos of landscapes. And no photos of people. (Wait -- there's one with me in it, huh?) Right.

Photos from my tour of the Highlands, comin' right up.