Today is one of the best reasons to like Thanksgiving. The turkey is great, and days of leftovers are wonderful. Family is, of course, the biggest part of it, and the opportunity to reflect is the actual point. And you can do a lot of that on Friday, too. You can avail yourself of a lot of those things on the Friday after Thanksgiving, as it happens.
This was the morning view:
We had an early trip to the airport to drop off The Yankee’s parents. They’d flown in on Sunday and stayed the week and today was the least expensive flight back out to the east coast. They’re old friends who have retired to Indy came down for turkey yesterday. We had a fine time of it. A lot of toil in the kitchen; a lot of tittering in the dining room.
I said all of the good things on the table were my bride’s and anything bad was something I made, but everything was delicious. We were fortunate to have a table full of food and now we have most of a refrigerator full to enjoy all weekend.
And though the in-laws were back before I woke up from a nap, we’ll see them again in a few more weeks. Plenty of visiting for the holidays this year, happily enough.
We took a nice walk this evening, and I enjoyed seeing this tree on fire.
I hope I get back by there again before it deposits all of its leaves onto the ground.
And here was the almost-sunset. Between the tree line and the neighbors we don’t have the best view of the western horizon.
But you can always walk toward it, and try to make sunset heart hands.
Heart hands, we learned, are a bit more challenging in gloves for some reason. She gave it a few shots, but the laughter was better than the posing. Sometimes it’s like that. It’s always better that way.
And I read Craig Johnson’s new book today. He pulled no punches in the acknowledgments. It’s the theme of this part of his Longmire series, and it’s something you might have heard about in the news recently. It spanned two pages in the layout, but it’s worth remembering.
I prefer the series to the books. The character is here, of course. It’s in the first person, though, which is not my favorite style. And there’s always a scene where the central figure takes a bigger beating than necessary. And he’s a bit goofier in the novels than the way Robert Taylor played him in the series.
And there’s the aging problem. The books are now taking place right after one another, which helps. Each book takes place in a different season, so four books equals a year. So this is year four — and I’ve somehow read all 17 in this series. But the sheriff, in the books, is a Vietnam veteran living and working in a time of smart phones. In this one he directly mentions the 1963 Rose Bowl in which the character played. It’s a different sort of math. Whereas Taylor is 49 or 50 in that scene above. But if you can ignore that part, they’re good reads. The bad guys are always idiots or devious villains. The victims and bystanders have a certain heroic stoicism and some keen philosophy. The sheriff always gets his man. And, usually, a head wound.
That’ll do for now. Have a lovely weekend. See you here on Monday.
