Well, another Thanksgiving has come and been gobbled up. We had a lot of fun doing some grass-sledding (we pull a sled behind a 4-wheeler over grass). We ate large amounts of food, and still had amazing amounts of leftovers to take home. A few years ago Annette started a Thanksgiving Tablecloth Tradition, we have a special tablecloth and scatter a few permanent markers about the table, while you eat or as you please, people are to write the thing they are most thankful for this year. Corbin was thankful for sledding & snow (even though we had no snow at the time). Farrah was thankful for presents and for mom & dad. Annette was thankful for the new carpet in house and for new tile. I was thankful that our general stratagem this year to increase overall gratitude in our family seems to be paying off, the kids are a lot more thankful for the extra things and Annette and I complain a lot less and so are more content with what we have, it is a self-fulfilling attitude, like smiling makes you happier, expressing gratitude for everything makes you more thankful and content.

I bought this really cool Bernz-O-Matic butane torch/soldering gun because the lame CoolTouch soldering gun I bought is useless! For $20 the Bernz-O-Matic came with extra fuel, a handy stand for keeping hot things away from things not intended to be heated, and a pretty ingenious little shroud for converting the torch into a nice, comfortable, controllable, and completely cord free soldering gun! The $20 I spent on the CoolTouch unit did not deliver even 10% of the quality, functionality, and convenience and the Bernz... unit. In fact, the CoolTouch was worse than useless because I spent over an hour attempting to solder something, and since it cools down immediately after breaking the electrical circuit between the two leads on the unit and your workpiece, all I succeeded in doing was create beautiful little blobs if silver colored metal.

I saw parts of a documentary on PBS last night about Afghani people during the oppression of the Taliban Regime. Being extremists, the Taliban believe that all human creations that represent living things (photographs, paintings, films, etc) are blasphemous and therefore must be destroyed. So there was a man in Afghanistan who clandestinely painted over oil paintings with water-color paints, hiding any living creatures in them, and blending them away to the background. What would have been contraband for destruction became simply paintings of buildings or rocks. After the Taliban was deposed, the water colors were simply washed off with a damp sponge, the oil based paint below completely unharmed. There was also a film archive that contained the last 50 years of Afghani history, that was to be destroyed. The men who worked in the building built a wall over the door to the room where the films were kept, sheetrock, putty and everything, then painted it and disconnected the lights right outside the door so there would be little light to reveal the tampering. Inspections by the Taliban never revealed the archive and the historical films were preserved. Both of these acts were done under the threat of a death penalty (probably via public torturing, or something alike, as those Taliban animals always did). Those men deserve many congratulations, they are some of the many anonymous heroes of the middle-eastern region, struggling to protect right and truth by preserving a little humanity amidst what is obviously a Satanic attempt at forcing all people to comply with laws that not everybody (not even a majority) agrees with.

I have been feeling particularly un-festive this holiday season...what? What holiday season, it's still only middle November? Yup, and that is exactly my problem, "the season" has broken it's banks and is flooding out all over the place. I normally really enjoy the holiday season, the snow, the increased commercial fervor, everybody making cookies and sneaking them to neighbors, etc. But the fact the "the season" has broken out of its season this year is really dragging me down. Wally World deployed their Christmas Toyland on October 4th this year, exactly 1 month earlier than last year, which even on November 4th was still 3 weeks earlier than the Christmas Holiday Season should really be allowed to begin. What's the big deal, you say? What's wrong with a whole extra 7 weeks of the Christmas Spirit? Well, nothing, if that was what we were getting. But we aren't. What we are getting is a whole extra 7 weeks of corporate commercialism crammed down our throats, without the warm cozy feelings that normally accompany "the season". So, here I am, trudging from store to store, buying crud for people who need no more crud, but may (or may not) feel slighted if I do not add to their pile of crud this year. I myself do not need any more crud. I have as yet been unable to supply even a single idea to my wife as to what additional crud I want from her and the children this year. Maybe in 3 weeks, when it really is Christmas season, and not just this phony, corporate synthesized season, I will be a little more open to the fervor of "the season".