Thanksgiving was lovely. Actually, the whole week was great. I didn't step foot in the office all week due to a few extra vacation days in my pocket and the beautiful fact that higher ed means more time off during holidays. I spent the past week marking off gifts from the holiday shopping list, cleaning and organizing a number of the things that had been on the to-do list for far too long, cooking and baking and generally relaxing in my flannel pajamas.

And better late than never I suppose but just in case you wondered: I am thankful for cold weather, for family ping pong tournaments in between plates of turkey and home made pecan pie, for my niece who lovingly shares her box of 64 Crayola crayons and her princess coloring book with me, for the way that my sister-in-law refers to my brother as "love" in everyday conversation, for my family who, in spite of everything, manages to come together with so much love that the pain seems worth the trouble.

And I am thankful for this commercial, which managed to make me laugh and snort out loud in my living room because I absolutely know what this woman is feeling. Welcome holiday season!

Today's #1
I was in LUV with this song and this video at age thirteen. I don't know if it was the blatant sexualness of the whole thing or the beauty and the beast aspect but I was so in to Meatloaf, I was totally fealing the whole bat out of hell thing, I mean I really got it. And even today, when it came on the radio in my car I turned it up, rolled the windows down and sang at the top of my lungs. Especially the part when the sultry lady with the lace-up top comes in floating on a couch singing all raspy like. Funny, now that I think about it, I tend to sing out loud to most Meatloaf songs. Interesting indeed.

So here it is, the number one song on the Billboard chart 14 years ago today, November 13th, 1993. I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That), the extended, seven and a half minute version, enjoy!

Fall(ing)
There are many things I miss about New York. Well, perhaps I should rephrase that. (The previous statement sounds a little too much like I expect all of the internet to pull out tiny little violins and serenade me through my despair over the life I once led which is exactly the opposite of how I would like that to sound.) So let's just say that there there are many things I love about New York. (See, that evokes a much cheerier picture drawing upon all of the great things about a city I left more than two years ago, the kind of feeling that makes you want to go there, not cringe at the thought of yet another one of those stories.) Perhaps even more than the food and the theater and the endless adventures you can have on foot, one of the things I love most about New York are the seasons, specifically the fall. Or the autumn as those with a much classier vocabulary than I might say. That first day when you need longer sleeves and maybe even a light jacket as you make your way through your daily routine. When the sky is a little grayer and the trees a little more amber than emerald. I love that day, that smell, that season.

The first sign of fall found its way to my neighborhood today in the form of cool, gray weather and it is lovely. Texas, as most of you may know, doesn't really do seasons. We do hot, less hot and ice, then the cycle repeats. But today, today I am sipping an egg nog latte topped with a sprinkle of cinnamon. I have a new book to read and want to be curled up on my couch indulging in its pages with the sound of the leaves blowing in the wind on my back porch. Today I want to wander through the cute antique stores in town looking for gifts and fun shaped cookie cutters and sinfully expensive preserves to slather on my toast in the mornings. Today I want to sit on a bench in Central Park and watch the people go by. Today I want to fall into the season and just be for a very long time.