Thanksgiving

About a bajillion years ago- relative to my own existence, at least- the Pilgrims and the Indians celebrated the first Thanksgiving. They had yet to become Native Americans at that time, so you can get over it now: I'm calling them Indians.

Anyway, back to the story. Then we went and killed most of them, stole their land, and sold the rest firewater. Which reminds me: the economic downturn means we should spend more time with friends and family, and a nice bottle of wine goes great with that. I recommend a little place called Post Wine and Spirits in Larchmont, NY.

Right, so the story. Somewhere around the time of the War of Northern Aggression, legendary human Abraham Lincoln began the movement to mark the occasion of our first Thanksgiving with annual wildly inaccurate pageants and family dinners. On this day, we count our blessings and take part in our two great American pastimes: forgetting the baseball is our national pastime and eating too much.

This year, because I couldn't bear to spend another cherished holiday watching the Detroit Lions lose, I moved to China. Here, I estimate that 99.9999% of 1.3 billion people don't even know the Detroit Lions exist. For those of Americans living abroad, however, Thanksgiving is still a fairly important occasion, and agree it is totally worth it to go out of our way and order an already cooked turkey from a hotel restaurant or supermarket.

Having set the scene, my holiday begins at 8:15 AM. This might come as a surprise to many of you, but this is an hour at which I am, by and large, unaccustomed to waking. All the same, my neighbors chose to eviscerate all hope of having a nice post-Thanksgiving Eve-revelry sleep by making the bold decision to use a power drill, a power saw, and a hammer for the hour following this wicked wake up call. Throwing up my hands, metaphorically since I'm actually trying to suffocate my ears with the pillows, I lied in bed thinking about how lucky I am to be in China.

Cut to the early evening. It's 6:30 PM and I've just left work early. The subway is crowded, which means it's actually not bad tonight. Usually it is absurdly crowded. I've got the new Guns N' Roses record on my iPod, which is a ridiculous sentence phrase for several reasons. It's illegality here in China is the reason I'll highlight.

I just lost my train of thought imagining how I would look wearing Slash's hat, so I'll just skip to the white meat and mashed potatoes of the story. The holiday was spent nicely at a friend's place, where we had a traditional Thanksgiving feast of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and curried tofu. (There were a lot of non-Americans there, and they felt compelled to bring something. Silly Canadians.) We did the hokey thing and went around saying what we were thankful for, and we all lied and said our friends. But it got me thinking about what I actually am thankful for, so here it goes:

1. I am thankful for my family, who are wonderful in every way- especially their support and understanding. I am thankful that they are smart, sociable, moral people who have done their damnedest to make me so, too.

2. I am thankful for my friends, who are still really cool and who totally miss me, but would be mad at me if I came back early. I am thankful that they are all doing their thing, too, so that we can compare notes.

3. I am thankful that I found a job. Economic crisis, my left foot. I am also thankful that it is a job I enjoy, working with people I like.

4. I am thankful that I have this opportunity to travel the world and follow my dream.

5. I am thankful for Barack Obama winning. Particularly, I am thankful for Sarah Palin losing.

6. I am thankful for the Internet making most of what I do feasible.

7. I am thankful that I finally finished reading Cryptonomicon. As awesome as it was, 1100 pages is really just too long. Which is why the next book I'm reading will only be around 800 pages.

8. I'm thankful to the peoples of Spain and France for having languages that I found totally abhorrent in seventh grade, forcing me to capriciously choose Chinese as my language of choice. Since hypothetical situations are poor arguments, however, we will not go ahead an imagine the alternate reality in which I spend my adult life on the French Riviera as a successful importer-exporter/secret agent. "Will not," I said.

And that's it. I hope you all had a great holiday, too.

Notes

Over the past few weeks, I've been extremely busy, and there's been a lot to report on. Of course, that meant I didn't bother taking the time to report it.

• Last Tuesday, my dad and I went to one last Yankee game together for a few years, and our last at the legendary Yankee Stadium. Baseball's been a huge part of my life for so long: many of my fondest memories are intertwined with the sport. Yankee Stadium holds a special place in the hearts of many, and I'm proud to be a part of that many. Tuesday, we were blessed to see Derek Jeter become the Yankee-ist Yankee ever when he passed the great Lou Gehrig for the most hits ever at Yankee Stadium, a record that is both impressive and unbreakable. Jeter is one of the few guys left that I can really say I grew up watching, and seeing all those years of following him culminate with the record was really special.

• Over the weekend, I had the chance to head back down to Richmond to visit the girlfriend. I'm not going to get gushy, but it was incredible to spend time with her again. The girlfriend's sister got married, and the ceremony was really beautiful. Weddings are really awesome, all things considered, as long as you're not actually a part of them. Then it's just really stressful. That being said, I hope it's several years before I have many more weddings to attend.

• It's also television time again! Right now, I am following these shows: True Blood, Entourage, How I Met Your Mother. Shortly, NBC comedies return, and I'll be adding 30 Rock and The Office to that list. I've officially abandoned Heroes as of late last season, and I'm waiting on shows like Fringe to develop a little more before I get too involved.

• Finally, the gears are finally turning for China, and it's officially time to start a countdown. I plan to send out emails Thursday to let people know, but I'll leak the info here first: I am officially going to Shanghai on October 10. The visa paperwork came earlier than expected- which is kind of strange since I expected it nearly a month ago- and I've started to really get the planning going. The flight has been booked, a hotel reservation has been made, and tomorrow I'm getting the application in to the consulate. Not only that, but I gave my two weeks to Giant Corporate Retail Chain. Things are moving quickly.

So that's the quick roundup. It ignores a lot of other notable happenings, but that's the way life works, no? I'm getting curious to see how this whole charade John McCain's pulling with the debates will play out. Maybe that's worth a few paragraphs some time...