Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Happy (early) Turkey Day!



Shane, Charlie, Sheldon and I are currently in the car barreling down the interstate towards Knoxville to spend Thanksgiving with our families! Don't worry, I'm not the one driving ;)


Anyways, I have a lot of things to be thankful for, and I wanted to share a few of them with you:


1. I am thankful we live closer to family now. We sure do miss Maryland and all our friends there, but it's sure a lot easier to drive three hours instead of ten to go home for the holidays.


2. I am thankful that Shane and I are making an effort to be healthier and are participating in the Hot to Trot 5k tomorrow at Turkey Creek. Hopefully we can preemptively burn off some calories. I do wish though that it wasn't so dang early, we have to be there at 6 am (5 am central!) for packet pick up.


3. I am thankful that I was able to buy a cooler on short notice tonight. I thought I was being smart by making all my pies early and then bringing them home, but didn't think of the logistics of them being in the car for several hours. But don't worry, I searched high and low and finally found a suitable model big enough to fit all six pies. Hope my family is ready for a slice of apple, pumpkin or chocolate cream pie!


4. I am thankful that we had no family scheduling conflicts this year. Usually it's difficult to coordinate holidays, but this year we're doing lunch with the Elliotts and dinner with the Horners.


5. I am thankful to not be working retail this year so I actually get to spend the holiday with family. I have done two holiday seasons of retail and that's two more than I would wish on anybody. When you aren't working long shifts and dealing with extremely difficult and ungrateful customers, you're at home, exhausted and hoping you gain your strength back before you have to go back in. Not at all fun.


6. I am thankful that today was my last day at my temp job. It may sound strange to think that someone would be glad to be unemployed, but if you'd seem me working at this job, you'd understand. The whole job was staring at a computer for eight hours a day, clicking back and forth between a zillion different screens and making sure databases matched. And most days, I didn't have very many projects assigned to me, so I would only have  around 1 or 2 hours of work a day. Oh, and we weren't allowed to be on the internet or our phones during downtime, because that was unprofessional. Sitting around getting paid to do basically nothing might sound like a perfect job to some people, but it just  wasn't for me. That's where Mr. Gobbles came from! He was my distraction all day on Tuesday.  


7. Last but not least, I am so thankful that Shane and I already have most of our Christmas shopping done and aren't going out on Black Friday! We somehow managed to knock out most of our list last Saturday, and I must say that I am so relieved. I hate working holiday shopping season, and I hate shopping in it too. Just the trip to Walmart for the cooler almost triggered a nervous breakdown!


Now that you've seen my list...what are you thankful for this Thanksgiving! Feel free to leave a list of your own down in the comments :)