I did a series of Birthday Songs over the last couple years for friends, co-workers and pretty much no family.  However, my all time favorite ditty that I wrote was an instrumental song I never got to finish.  The music was so good in my proud opinion that I never could fit words that I felt conveyed quite what the music did.  You can listen to it here.

I’m really thankful for my parents having raised me with music in my life.  From a Grandpa that plays the saw to a wife who supports my crazy musical fantasies (one day I will be a famous musician, just you wait) I’ve been blessed with this talent (though I need to keep honing it for sure).  I loves me some music and I love to play for people – maybe some day I can hang out with you and we’ll play some music together.

Our friends the Masons are coming into town to visit this weekend.  They’re bringing their little girl Nadia for us to meet for the first time.  That’s pretty exciting by itself, but also we’re going to Estes Park with them.  Its rather wintery in Estes Park compared to the planes of Aurora, but we’re really hoping for some beautiful pictures, fun times driving and chatting, and of course laughing about the crazy stuff in life.

We’re rather thankful for all of our friends, but its nice to have the Masons come and join us.

Yup, I’m totally copying Louanne.  She probably thinks I am all out of things to be thankful for so I’m copying her.  Well, sort of.  You see a few weeks ago I was in Texas at a conference and I had a chance to talk to a guy living in Poland.  He’s Polish so that’s not a huge surprise, but anyway… This guy was telling me all about how he was dealing with the after effects of the Russian occupation of Poland.  He and the rest of the nation that is.  The Russian culture (at least the ones that were occupying Poland) as he described it involved drinking much Vodka.  Much, too much, Vodka to the point of many people drinking and driving and the catastrophes that were caused by this drinking and driving were still normal in Polish life.

On a much lighter note they have no paved highways that consistently get you from point A to point B.  I can drive to many parts of the country in my Honda within two days time on nicely paved roads.  He can drive what should only take a couple hours on paved roads in 6-7 hours of time.   On dirt roads.  Uphill both ways.  OK, not really uphill both ways, but its a total pain.

I’m glad that we have the huge amount of freedom, its not the stuff that is reported on often, but its freedom.  We’re facing the problems that countries face when melting pots become too diverse and not enough melting, but we have most of our freedoms in tact and we’re in good shape in many regards.  I’m grateful for being born and raised here.  I just wish I had understood how great freedom was back when I was younger so that I could have paid attention and rejoiced with others in freedom rather than taking the freedom a bit too literally and focused on note passing and stupidness that is associated with immature Jr. high schoolers and such.

I just posted a story about Sunnyvale, California on my finances blog and it reminded me of some other things that had to do with Sunnyvale.  I’m grateful for the good home my parents raised me in.  It was warm, safe and always big enough for me to mess up.  Here are two short stories for your amusement:

Nick

Nick was my neighbor down the street.  Nick would get home from school a little later than I would.  He would get home and I wouldn’t be far behind.  Usually hoping to score some sort of snack from Nick’s mom who would buy sugary treats for her children.  My parents were ‘granola’ in comparison.  That is to say that they would buy healthy foods for us to eat.  Imagine that.  Healthy food – ugh – things that probably didn’t have a high refined sugar content.

So I would show up at Nick’s house and ask if he’d had snack, hoping that he hadn’t, and then after his mom kindly fed us a treat we’d play GI Joes in her garden bed.  Hours of GI Joes.  We probably killed a plant or two, but we dug tunnel after tunnel and probably lost five action figures over the time we played out there.  A bomb would blow up the tunnel, which would then bury the GI Joe, and then we’d forget about it.  A few times we actually found buried GI Joes – score!

Nick was older than me and when we left he was probably a little glad to get rid of the leach that was Randy Peterman, but the downside was that he had one less person to play GI Joes with.  He probably lost a lot fewer actions figures after that!

Israel & Sharone 

We had two Jewish neighbor boys.  I wouldn’t normally point that sort of information out except that they were practicing Jews and not just the ethnic variety.  Every Friday night as the sun was going down their mom would call them in and they would pack up their bikes, their toys and whatever else and disappear until the next Sunday.  When it got dark enough for the Sabbath to be over it was too dark to play so we lost a full Saturday with them as they obeyed the Torah (the Law of the Old Testament).

Every once in a while their mom would be without some ingredient or some cooking tool and she’d send them over on the Sabbath.  That was fun because they weren’t allowed to leave their property which was two houses down and a phone call was work [which if forbidden on the Sabbath].  However, to try to bend the rules and to get the needed item they were allowed to carry a stuffed animal fifty steps from their house, place it down, walk fifty more steps and then place the animal down.  Usually they needed 4-5 stuffed animals to get to our house’s front door where they would ask for something.  One time they asked if we had a brand new skillet that had not been cooked in or touched other pans that had cooked bacon or pork.  Unfortunately we didn’t ever have things they needed, but it was fun to watch them carry toys, which looked like work to me, just to come get some food or item, which would have been carried back, looking like work, to their house where it would have been used in food preparation… which would have been work 🙂

Good times.