Day 2891 - Thanksgiving

I feel like I've spent the entire day eating. Thanksgiving is the one time of year that Janet and I throw caution to the winds and fill our plates with way more than we need. We quit cooking at home years ago and prefer to go to a nice restaurant instead. For many years our favorite place was the revolving restaurant on the top of Reunion Tower. It was relaxing and the slowly rotating restaurant gave us an opportunity to see what had changed in Dallas during the previous year. Eventually the place got sold and became part of Wolfgang Puck's restaurant empire. Puck had no interest in continuing the lavish Thanksgiving brunch we had come to enjoy. We floundered around for several years and eventually found the Melrose Hotel. So far, so good. The waiters never rush you. The food is interesting and always includes several things you would never expect to eat at Thanksgiving. The salads are amazing. If they kept these salads on the menu during the rest of the year, we would go back more often.

We used to go up to the Dalmatian Rescue kennel after our dinner and give each of the rescue dogs a boiled chicken breast as a Thanksgiving treat. I forget why we quit doing this. Maybe one of our own dogs got sick, or we no longer had the time after the rescue dogs were relocated to a different kennel in Lewisville. It was a nice tradition for a while though. Now we just make sure that Dash has had a nice day.

I was so full when we returned home that I felt like calling it a day at 4 PM and going to bed. Dash has other ideas though. He wanted his own dinner and a long walk. A long, slow walk after Thanksgiving dinner is another tradition we have kept as long as we've had dogs. It was certainly a beautiful day for a walk. The sky was clear and the air was crisp and cool. The walk felt good. I was still full when we returned, but I no longer felt sluggish and catatonic.

We watched the Cowboys game for a little while, but the Cowboys really suck this year. There have been some memorable Thanksgiving day games, but this wasn't one of them. I still remember a game where it snowed in Dallas on Thanksgiving. It seems to snow less and less with each passing year. I don't think we got any snow last year. I can't say that I miss the snow, but it is strange how dramatically the weather has changed in just a few decades. Climate change? Probably. When we had our first Dalmatian, there was a year when our lake completely froze over. It hasn't happened since.

When I took Dash out to pee late last night, I saw Orion rising in the eastern sky. It's nice to see the Winter constellations return. There is so much light pollution in Dallas that's it's hard to see the stars in the Summer. The Winter stars are much brighter and bring back childhood memories. I was going to be an astronomer until I realized that there was a lot of math involved in this profession. I still like looking at the stars though. Maybe someday I'll live in a place where it is dark enough to see the Milky Way again.

It's been a lazy but pleasantly fuzzy day. I drank Mimosas. I consumed more calories than I normally do in a week. I didn't even attempt to do anything useful. Next week I'll start thinking about getting healthy again. Tomorrow, I'll probably just wish I hadn't eaten so much today.

Petey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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