I have a great deal in my life for which to be thankful.

I can lead off by mentioning Lis. Every day I see her and wonder how I managed to be lucky enough to end up with her.

And I am also thankful for all the rest of my friends -- all of you reading this (those of you I know in person, and those of you I know only through LiveJournal, too) -- those of you I've known for years, either online or meatspace, and those of you I've only met, meatspace or online, recently.

I'm thankful for my family. I'm one of a relatively few people I know without any family-conflict issues. Again, I don't know how I lucked out to be born into my family, but I'm thankful for it. That is why our family tends to adopt people into it -- a few of you are my siblings simply because my mother and father adopted you. My parents are like that -- if you have a rocky relationship with your own parents, or if you have a GOOD relationship with your parents, but they're too far away for you to see very often, or if you have a good relationship with your parents and you see them a lot but you want MORE parents, too, my parents will take you in and give you love.

And the rest of my family is similar. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins: everyone in my family is honorable, caring, clever, and decent. I don't know how I lucked out to be born into this family.

And then, Lis's family, too -- I managed to marry one of the only OTHER people I know whose whole family is honorable, caring, clever, and decent. I am as thankful for my in-laws as for the part of the family into which I was born.

I am thankful that we appear to have found a medication which controls my Depression, and is allowing me to restructure my life to be effective and productive. I am thankful that I am now in the process of making that restructuring, and that I feel like I am making some progress toward it.

I am thankful that we have a house, for which we paid a reasonable price, and which allows us to have rental income. I am thankful that we rent to good people who I like having as neighbors -- marquisedea and her boyfriend Josh upstairs, and vonbeck downstairs. I am thankful that our house is warm and dry, and comfortable. I am thankful that I have a kitchen in which I can cook, and that we have bookshelves full of books. I am thankful that we have plenty of warm, comfortable, and reasonably-good looking clothing to wear, warm jackets, shoes that keep our feet dry.

I am thankful that we have a washing machine and dryer so we don't have to go to the laundromat -- it makes life a lot easier. I'm thankful that we have a dishwasher. I'm thankful for our standing mixer, our electric kettle, our rice cooker, our Henkel's and Wusthoff knives. I'm thankful for our refrigerator, and our pantry, full of food.
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One more thing:

I am thankful that, for all the weirdnesses and problems North America has had over its history, we still managed to develop a holiday dedicated to eating a meal with family (chosen and/or biological) and reflecting on reasons to feel gratitude.

Alice's Restaurant is coming around on the gee-taur right now.

So, it's a New England tradition that many of the local radio stations play Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant on Thanksgiving. Because it's about a thanksgiving meal that can't be beat, and also about litterin', and about not participatin' in the mass-a-cree of innocent people in other countries just 'cause your gummint kinda wants you to.

Which is, unfortunately, relevant again.

But, see, I didn't start writin' this post to talk about the anti-mass-a-cree aspects of the song, important as those are. No, I wanted to talk about Officer Opie.

(You remember Officer Opie, don't you? He's in the song.)

See, now, do you know what Officer Opie looks like? I bet you do. Even if you didn't see the movie Alice's Restaurant, in which the role of Officer Opie is played by Officer Opie (his comment was "it's better to make myself look like a fool that watch someone else making me look like a fool) (Arlo Guthrie is played by Arlo Guthrie, the bind judge who oversees the case is played by the blind judge who oversaw the case, and Alice is played by Pat Quinn), you probably still know what he looks like.
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