Thanksgiving 2009

"Today is family day!" Sara shouted as she ran into our bedroom. "Except for daddy."

Sad, but true. She is right. It's family day for just about everyone today except those of us who work for places that don't close on holidays. The hospital workers (like me), the waitresses, the clerks who have to work at retail stores that are open day (and surprisingly, there's quite a few open today). We're all stuck at work today. Luckily for me, when I work on holidays, it's not the horror it is for those other people. Holidays at the hospital are almost always quiet and uneventful. Out of a 8 hour shift, I might have to actually work for about an hour of that time. There are no scheduled appointments, so the only people coming in are the emergency cases. People choking on turkey bones, car accidents, etc.

As we did last year, since I'm working in the evening, we had our turkey dinner earlier. For some reason, neither Sara or Kyle like mashed potatoes. I don't know why. When I was a kid, the only food I ate at Thanksgiving was turkey and mashed potatoes. I didn't like anything else, but I loved mashed potatoes. I thought kids love mashed potatoes. These kids are strange.

Another Round of Holidays...

The kids are about to celebrate their second Thanksgiving in America. I think we have a lot to be thankful for this year. Last year, the four of us were living in a fairly-cramped, one bedroom apartment. This year, we're in a two-bedroom apartment, and I believe by next Thanksgiving we will finally be in a house of our own. We're still looking at houses in a wide variety of price ranges. There are several houses that are just under 100k here in Austin that look really nice when you see the picture online. Then we you actually go to the house, it's not quite what you were expecting. Our main goal is to to try to keep our monthly mortgage payment low. The lower the mortgage payment, the less stress I will feel about buying a house.

We're thankful that both my wife and I have jobs right now when so many people don't. My (ex) brother-in-law has a page on Facebook where he writes that he has applied for around 150 jobs. My friend Jerry hasn't found a job yet, nor has my ex-wife, who lost her job about a year ago. It's still tough out there. Even though the economy is slowly improving, the jobs still aren't there yet.

We're also thankful that the kids are both healthy (and that they survived the freakin' swine flu!)

I'm thankful that I don't have to work this Christmas, like I did last year. Last year I worked both Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. This year, although I'm still working on Thanksgiving, I'll have 4 days off for Christmas.

Because of my rather poor relationship with my brother (and also because we need as much money as possible for a down payment on the house), I won't be going back to California for Christmas. Just the flight alone would have cost us $2,000 to go back this time of year. $2,000 was the entire amount we spent on our last trip there in May, and that included the rental car, hotels, and entertainment.

I tend to think about my relationship with my brother a bit more during the holidays. Now that we're buying our own house, I think about how sneaky he was to get my mom to buy him a house, and then give me and my sister $10,000 dollars a piece, as if to placate us. He's got a $400,000 home. Me and my sister have ten thousand dollars. What I think about now is, if the money was shared equally between all three of us, we could all have bought our own house with it. Sure, it wouldn't have been enough to buy a big fancy house with a pool (like my brother has), but it would have been enough to get something decent (especially here in Texas). I just saw a great house here in Austin for $176,000.

Still, Christy tells me I just need to let it go, and she's right. As the song goes: "If you keep carrying that anger, it will eat you up inside." It's true, and this should be a time to be thankful for what we do have, and not what we don't.

2012: The End of the World?

I just saw the movie "2012" this past weekend. It's based on the Mayan prophecy that the world will end on December 21, 2012. The movie is 2 hours and 40 minutes of mass destruction: earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, and everything but the kitchen sink thrown in.

The director (Roland Emmerich) has made some decent movies in the past. "Independence Day," "The Patriot," and "The Day After Tomorrow," to name a few. He's also made total crap like "Godzilla" and "10,000 BC."

I thought the movie was pretty good. I'd give it about a "7" on a scale of 1 to 10. I didn't particularly like the message it sent: that only the billionaires and politicians of the world will be deemed worthy enough to survive.

**Spoiler Ahead**
In the movie, the only people who survive are those who can pay 1 billion dollars per person to get a seat on an "ark." The "ark" being an enormous ship built within the Himalayas that can withstand the massive "mega tsunami" that's approaching. Is it fair? No. But I guess that's the way it would be in reality. It' all about $$$
**End of Spoiler**

Personally, I don't buy into any of it. Many thought that Y2K would be the end of the world. People were building underground bunkers and stocking up on food and water. What did I do on December 31, 1999? I was at the Eagles concert at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Yep, I knew (and was right) that nothing would happen.

2012 (the movie and the year) will come and go as well. If there is any possible sign that 2012 might be the beginning of the apocalypse, it's that Sarah Palin might run for president that year.

Health Care Rally in Austin

A few days ago I received an email from President Obama (okay, it was just a computer generated email, but still...it had his name on it!) He informed me that there was going to be a big healthcare rally at the Austin Capitol this afternoon, and that I should attend to show my support for reform.

Normally, and regrettably, I rarely attend these kind of things. I'm not a very political person, although I do have very strong opinions and often voice them (as I have on this blog numerous times.) But as for going to some big rally and holding signs and shouting...well, that's just not me. This time, though, since we're only about 15 minutes from the capitol building, and because I do feel very strongly in favor of healthcare reform, we decided to go.

To be honest, I was expecting massive crowds there. I was expecting maybe 20,000 to 40,000 people. I even parked about a mile away from the capitol, since I assumed it would be crazy as we got closer.

Man, was I wrong. So very wrong. There were maybe, at most, 1,000 people. There was ample parking everywhere. Either this thing just wasn't advertised very well, or Austin isn't quite the liberal mecca it's made out to be.

Still, it was interesting listening to people rip into Governor Rick Perry, Senator (and traitor) Joe Lieberman, and all the tea-baggers going around protesting the public option. Why do people hate the idea of a public option so much? Because they don't like the idea of government running healthcare? Well, if that bothers you, don't buy into it. It's just that simple. Keep whatever crap health insurance you have, like Humana (the one I have). Then there are those who think it will cost too much money, yet have no problem with the continuing wars we have going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. My God, if we took all the money we've spent on these two pointless wars, and put it into healthcare instead, there wouldn't be a single living soul in this country without health coverage.

(Pictures: The sparsely attended healthcare rally)