Happy Thanksgiving

Well here we are on the eve of Thanksgiving, on the front edge of a long weekend holiday. I cannot say for certain what the weekend may hold, since I still do not have my car; for the past week it has been at the service department of its original dealer in Roseville, mostly awaiting its turn to be seen by the one mechanic apparently employed there who can hook it up to a computer and discover (hopefully) what went wrong. All they can say at this point is that there is some sort of power fault in the hybrid system. That's what the "initial" error codes disclosed for the one brief time it was apparently plugged into a diagnostic computer. I mean, come on, I could have told them that. That's basically what the big scary flashing light on the center console dash means, and the fact that it loses drive power after a couple of minutes provides enough empirical data to back that claim up.

So I sit now at home, my car shopping dreams on hold, while being thankful that my dad's 2014 CR-V is still fully functional and able to be borrowed by me for the purposes of getting back and forth to work and stores and my son's playdates and so on. I think his car must have spent significant time on display in a museum somewhere, for though it is nearly ten years old it only has 21,000 miles on it. Well, a few hundred more now. My car, half his car's age, just passed the 70,000 mark, before it had its midlife crisis a week ago. 

And despite this picture's appearance, I am not now drinking cocoa, for this picture was not taken today nor even this week, but way back on November 2. It was the most recent photo I'd taken of myself, that I saw fit to save and not immediately delete anyway. I'm still working on improving my selfie taking skills...In any case this was a yummy cup of cocoa, down in midtown Sacramento. And it signified, more or less, the start of the winter weather season. Which is to say that the temperatures dropped below 50 degrees, my arbitrary target line for when it becomes just cold enough to justify buying hot chocolate at Starbucks. 

I did make some cocoa today, at work, from instant powder and microwaved water. It, too, was good. And some hours later, and completely unrelated to cocoa, a random mental homeless guy wandered into my office and plopped himself down on my couch. He said he needed to sit for a bit and "consider (his) options." If that's not disconcerting, I don't know what is. He also said he doesn't like his name, and wants to change it before he is "booked". He thought his new name should be OG. I'm...not sure what that means.

But after drinking one of my Capri Suns, which he referred to as a "juice box", and giggling to himself whilst lost deep in thought, the police arrived and called him by name (Daniel) and escorted him away. And now I suppose I should be thankful that I not only have a place to live, but I still have my mental faculties. For the time being anyway. I'm not getting any younger you know. It does put things in perspective as I reflect on my poor little Niro resting up on its own little spa retreat vacation at the Roseville Kia Service Center. And despite this, I still have transportation at my disposal. Thank goodness for supportive family! 

And tomorrow we'll start the morning in our own privileged way drinking mimosas and eating cream-cheese coffee cake while watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. And later, wine and sparkling cider and probably more food than anyone should ingest at my brother's house. And the thing I'm most thankful for, my son, is here with me to enjoy the holiday. We just went for one of our infamous "night walks" around the property. So, yeah, it's a pretty good Thanksgiving after all.