3/14/17

i'm thankful that it snowed yesterday, even though i thought after it was 67 the other day that the days of snow were over for the season. i'm thankful for surprises. i'm thankful that though it was too warm for the snow to cover all of the land around the house, it did stick a bit. i'm thankful to have romped with the dog through the snow. i'm thankful to have watched the snow through the house's many windows during my work day. i'm thankful i did qigong on my lunch break, which the dog found interesting. i'm thankful that the dog seems to have calmed down a bit and i'm thankful he's currently sleeping in the bedroom of the boy in the family. i'm thankful to not have to take him out in the dark, which i did yesterday morning and which made it hard to keep track of him. i'm thankful that though one of the cats snuck into our room when i went downstairs to get breakfast this morning, d picked him up and moved him out.

i'm thankful to think about how much i wanted to live in a two story house when i was young. i'm thankful that when you are young, a stairway to another level bears such promise, such excitement. i'm thankful that it's different as an adult, with responsibilities, that having to move things up and down the stairs or to go back up or downstairs because i forgot something is mostly just annoying. i'm thankful for our one story house, even though it's not as nice as this house. i'm thankful for our bowls and mugs, which are more capacious than the bowls and mugs at this house (i'm thankful for the child's bowl of cereal i had for breakfast this morning. i'm thankful that though the tap water doesn't taste very good, they have a water filter in their refrigerator that makes it taste better.

i'm thankful for the htc vive vr setup they have in their sun room. i'm thankful that after a period of driver and power cycling, i was able to power up the setup and get it to work. i'm thankful for virtual reality, which really does feel like magic in a way that can't really be described but has to be experienced. i'm thankful that almost anything you do in vr feels exciting and compelling, which may just mean i'm not used to it yet but i think has to do with that sense that you are actually in another place entirely, a place where the rules that govern the real world don't necessarily apply. i'm thankful to feel that i want to get a set myself when we move into a house with more room, though i also worry that it would consume too much of my free time, which the setup in the sun room has done since i've been living here. i'm thankful, though, for the experience, which gives me renewed hope for the future of video games. i'm thankful that virtual reality enables a whole new range of play activities and makes them just as or (often) more compelling than the shooting and hitting which are the central verbs of most non-vr games. i'm thankful to fantasize that the future of video games is not adolescent male power fantasies, as the past and the present of video games have been, but better things.

i'm thankful that a demo of the new pathologic came out. i'm thankful for this piece on the art and science of white noise. i'm thankful to have been reminded of cavatappi, which i don't eat that often but which i think probably is the best pasta shape. i'm thankful we facetimed with my parents last night and i suggested a few things my dad can try to improve his digestion. i'm thankful for icebreakers sours. i'm thankful my strategy of buying a dessert i don't like that much in order to eat less dessert kind of worked a bit but actually not really. i'm thankful that though my kindle seems to have broken, i can still read on my phone, even though my phone contains more distractions. i'm thankful last night in bed to have started reading the 33 1/3 book on donuts. i'm thankful for donuts and i'm thankful for donuts.