Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Most of our readers are probably either about to go to sleep right now or already a couple of hours into their slumbering. Regardless of which timezone you're in, Happy Thanksgiving. Ours has been quite eventful, but not from a holiday perspective.

This morning, the good people at J:Com (our telecommunications provider here) came over to install all the wiring required to enable us to watch cable television, talk on the telephone, and surf the internet from our very own home. This is my very first post on our home computer since leaving San Diego over a month ago. The J:Com reps arrived here around 8:30am today and spent a good portion of the morning running a cable line from the back of our house all the way around to the front, upstairs, and into our computer room for internet use. They also spent a good little while getting the other cable line from the same general area out back into our living room for cable television use. Then they asked us where our telephone was and Nicki and I stared at each other blankly. We have a bunch of unopened boxes in our house still, so we started digging until I finally found an older cordless phone to use until we find the phone we actually want to use. The bad news is that the old cordless phone's rechargable battery is dead as a doornail. So we can't use our land line for now.

During all the J:Com action, Nicki started cooking our Thanksgiving meal. The J:Com reps were still here around 2:00pm when the meal was ready, so we thought it would be nice to share our feast with them. We did our best to explain that it was an American holiday meal, but I don't really know if they understood a word we said. The good news is that they must have enjoyed the meal because their plates were clean in record time. They finally finished up around 3:00pm and went along their merry way. Nicki and I couldn't help but think how cool it was that we got to share our American holiday with others, even if they didn't understand the tradition that surrounds it.

Top 10 Things That I'm Thankful For This Year
10. Watching Josh grow, change, and learn during his 2nd year of life.
9. Another year of marriage with my wonderful and beautiful wife.
8. Surviving the year's challenges and growing through what I've learned.
7. The good health of family and friends.
6. The addition of new friends, especially those through the birth of our friends' new babies.
5. Having the opportunity to move to Japan.
4. Accepting the opportunity to move to Japan.
3. Nicki's acceptance of the opportunity to move to Japan.
2. Our family and friends' encouragement and understanding about our decision to move to Japan.
1. Being (once again) attached to the rest of the world from home, through the internet, television, and telephone.