The Thanksgiving Report

I write this because a lot of people seem to want to know what I did for Thanksgiving.  I stayed in Colorado.  Luke & Co went to Salt Lake City to spend the holiday with Janna's relations. They left on Monday and returned home the following Sunday so I had the whole house to myself all week.  I was never lonely though because I have excellent friends who made sure I was taken care of. 

I worked Monday through Wednesday, and those three days were full of catching up and late evenings at the office.  I shudder to think of the state of my mind (and office) if I had made plans to be gone for the hoilday. We added new locations half way through the month and the startup work put me behind in everything else, including time-sensitive tasks.  I'm happy to report I did catch up and all is well and back on schedule.

For the holiday itself I had multiple invitations for dinner, but alas I could not make all of them.  I did go to Marylou's for early dinner and Emily's for late dinner.  You 'aint never had second dinner till you've had a Thanksgiving second dinner.  It was delicious.  The company was also excellent.  Both families took treat me like their own. 

This isn't my first Thanksgiving away from family.  My first semester of college was spent in Nauvoo.  Travelling anywhere was a prevatitively laborious task, so I stayed in Illinois with most of the student body and we celebrated together.  That time was a lot harder, being the first time away.  This time wasn't so bad.  I called the family in the morning and talked for a long time. 

The rest of the week was mostly pleasant.  Saturday revolved around the BYU-UT game, the result of which lowered my spirits the remainder of the day.  Everyone arrived home on Sunday evening safely and soundly despite the wild weather all across the Rockies.  We weren't touched by the storm in this area.  It was sunny and lovely all week.  Today reached 66 degrees downtown.  Happy early Christmas Denver!

Change

"I have always believed that in the lives of individuals, just as in society at large, the profoundest changes take place within a very reduced time frame.  When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait.  Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny."

Author's note, The Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coelho

I started reading this new book the other day.  I encountered the above quote at the end of the author's note at the beginning.  The truth of the statement struck me quite forcefully.  I've found myself returning to reread it over and over. I thought about it so much I sort of didn't care to start the actual story for a while.

I feel like all of the most "profound" changes in my life took place in relatively short periods of time.  This is not to stay that all significant changes occurred quickly because, of course, some things simply cannot be shortened.  But the changes that stick most in my mind, and therefore I consider most profound, were choices suddenly imposed upon me.  Those moments certainly challenged my courage and forced themselves upon me in such a way to demand a response.  Indeed, I could not ignore their presence, nor could I delay my decision out of un-readiness because as it says above, "the challenge will not wait."

I suppose if we did expect sudden challenges before they arrived, and if they were drawn out over a period of time, their impact would not be so indelible in our lives.  They are all the more significant and memorable precisely because they are sudden, unexpected, and jarring.  It's a lot easier to remember fire is hot once you get burned.

Since I cannot predict when such sudden moments of decision are going to occur, all the more reason to be prepared for whatever comes.  All the more reason to make intermediate decisions every day that I can control.  All the more reason to stick to morals and goals and beliefs and other tried and tested frameworks to guide my life to minimize stress and maximize making the decision that is matches who I am and/or want to become.

Statistics can be fun!

Today I discovered the "Stats" tab on my blogger dashboard.  I have no idea how long it's been there, but I'm glad it is!  It provides me information about my blog traffic such as referring sites (who found me from veganfoodrecipes.com?), countries where people have viewed it, browsers people use, and even the kind of operating system used (the PC people far outnumber Mac; I wonder if that reveals something about my politics).  You can view traffic right now, from all day today, all month, and all time.  There is no identifying information so I can't tell who exactly who is visiting my corner of the web.  I can't back-stalk anyone, but it is very interesting to see what kind of audience I'm reaching.  I'm surprised by which posts have had the most views, a little disappointed at the ones that only have a few.  But I won't feel bad because that probably has more to do with my marketing than my readership's loyalty.

My favorite information is seeing where people are at when they viewed my blog.  The countries with the most pageviews are listed.  Of course, by far the place most people view it from is the United States, but surprisingly (or maybe not) the second on the list is Brazil.  I had a brother and cousin serve missions in Brazil for our church so they probably pulled it up once in a while. Tied for third are Azerbaijan, Canada, and the United Kingdom.  The latter two are explainable-- I know of readers in each place-- but the former?  I had to Google it because I'd never heard of it before.  Who might have found me in Azerbaijan?  Must have turned up in a random web search.  To round out the list, fourth most popular is Russia trailed by Burundi, Latvia, Ukraine, and Denmark respectively.  As far flung as they may seem, I can actually guess who was viewing it in eastern Europe and Denmark, but I don't know anyone in Burundi.  Must have been other fluke hits.  I'm surprised Germany and Taiwan didn't make the list since I know I have/had readers in each.  I guess the system isn't perfect or comprehensive.  But it is certainly entertaining!

Greetings to my readers everywhere!  I'm always flattered when people want to read what I write.  Even if you have stumbled here by accident, thanks for visiting and feel free to stay a while.