'Tis The Season

Okay, so the title of this post seemingly glosses over today's Thanksgiving holiday and dives straight into the crass commercialism of Christmas. However, I'd be remiss if I allowed the body of this post to do the same. So, on that note, I hope any and all reading this have a wonderful Thanksgiving. To those to the North and South, Happy Thanksgiving-in-law.

I'm going to be celebrating this holiday in mellow fashion; Kaia's in Cali so we're going to do Thanksgiving at a restaurant here in NYC. It's never the same as being home for this particular holiday, and while we don't celebrate Christmas, I can't help but recall with fond nostalgia spending Thanksgiving in NJ with the parental unit and the rest of the family. But as holidays go, this one, as they all are since 2004, is a happy one, and one that is far more serious than it was prior to 2004. I'm not sure if "celebrating" it is per se the right term, but its arrival marks a passage of time that reminds me of the past and the future and the art, and the beauty in, savoring and being thankful for what you've got and what you don't. For some, this holiday is mostly about the food -- and Thanksgiving, as far as food-related holidays, is a biggie -- but it's -- rightfully so -- become so much more than that on many different levels.

In either case, I've got some PC upgrades and installations to attend to so I won't spend much more time herein, but I did want to make sure the day didn't pass with mentioning the recent violence in Mumbai. I could speculate, lament, mourn and/or deplore along with the rest of the world on that particular horror, but I suppose that whole situation implores us, more than ever, to be thankful for what and who we've got in our lives, and also, on a more general scale, reminds us that the world is changing, and not necessarily for the better. We can spend our too few days on this Earth reminiscing about this change, and recall the "good old days" with wistful melancholy, or we can simply work to insure the changes we're facing aren't permanent and in fact begin to go in the right direction. I'm not sure about that second part, but I do know and believe that all is not lost.

In the meantime, my thoughts and prayers go out to everyone who has been directly affected by the events in Mumbai, and I hope this incident -- or series of incidents -- serves to remind us how precious life is and how to appreciate whatever it is we do have. It's always easy to take these things for granted, until they are no longer there.

Again, a happy thanksgiving to you all.

-B-