11/25

i'm thankful that i don't have to work today. i'm thankful that though i didn't have to work yesterday, i worked a bit in the afternoon on a special project. i'm thankful that through this work i was able to figure out a way to make a particular onerous task for our team much easier. i'm thankful for the ability to serialize and encode xml on one end and to parse and decode it on the other end—i'm thankful for the magic of the original xml appearing, in the new document, intact, which feels like sorcery, even though it's just expected behavior (i'm thankful for that phrase, which i hear and use many times every day). i'm thankful i worked a bit on my personal project as well yesterday—i'm thankful, even if it's wonky, for the html5 speech synthesis API. 

i'm thankful that the vince guaraldi trio has other albums besides the charlie brown christmas album (which is my favorite christmas music, but which i am not quite ready for (though i'm thankful to look forward to "skating" and "linus and lucy")). i'm thankful now to be listening to their self-titled first album, from 1956. i'm thankful for small group jazz, especially with the small group includes a guitar. i'm thankful for jazz piano, which, if i could magically make myself able to do anything that would probably be the thing that i would want to be able to do. i'm thankful for complex but mellifluous harmonies, for dissonance mixed with sweetness, for the juxtaposition of what the left hand is doing and what the right hand is doing, for scalar runs and for pedal sustain.

i'm thankful for the uniqlo black friday sale, since i could probably do to stock up on some more winter basics. i'm thankful that in a week and a day, d and i will be in chicago for our winter vacation. i'm thankful to know that it is a bit crazy to go to chicago in december but am thankful that i know we will have a good time. i'm thankful that since we work remotely, we're going to work a few days in the midst of the time that we're there, which will be nice because a) it will save some vacation days for later and b) because we often get exhausted from the demands of travel as a trip wears on and it will, i think, be nice to be able to take a break and sit inside our airbnb with our computers for a few days rather than hustling and bustling.

i'm thankful that even though it was cold yesterday, we bundled up and went for a long walk. i'm thankful that i let myself have a few glasses of dry red wine with our traditional thanksgiving charcuterie and cheese and fruit feast yesterday and am thankful that i stopped myself at just the right point of intoxication so that i didn't feel sick later. i'm thankful to drink in the early afternoon while on vacation. i'm thankful for the episode of the great british bakeoff we watched (tudor week), even though one of my favorite bakers went home. i'm thankful for luther and thankful that boyhood is now on netflix, as well as the new gilmore girls, even though the latter will almost inevitably be a disappointment. 

i'm thankful that d got to watch finding dory, which made her happy, and i got to take a bath and read my book instead of watching it, which made me happy.i'm thankful that last night what i briefly and ridiculously feared (after watching too much luther) was a prowler was actually a mouse caught in a trap in the bathroom. i'm thankful for this compilation of videos of a hot knife going through things and for videos of people flipping water bottles, which i find very satisfying and could watch possibly forever. i'm thankful for this chinese mad max ripoff, mad sheila. i'm thankful i'm thankful for blair waldorf. i'm thankful for cursed images and for blessed images.