planning saturday

1. Get up and drink coffee in front of the faux fireplace. Wear warm slippers.
2. Finalize grocery list for Thanksgiving dinner. 
3. Read over recipes and think about cooking.
4. Go to Whiskey River for breakfast. Have a Mexican omelet with bacon and lots of spicy salsa. Drink lots of coffee. Watch the wild turkeys and the deer.
5. Think about our float in the fish house parade. 
6. Go for a long walk in the sunshine.
7. Buy stuff to make pumpkin truffles.
8. Take a nap.
9. Take a long bath with bubbles, a candle, and a cup of coffee.
10. Meet friends for dinner at Suzette's in Jordan.

Notice there is a lot of thinking and not much doing on this list. My favorite kind of day. I have a long list of  things to do for Thanksgiving Day but I'm ahead of schedule and none of them needs to be done today. That's good. I can revert back to my hedonistic ways and pursue pleasure/avoid pain.

We stopped at the bar last night to help our friend, Vickie, celebrate the first anniversary of her divorce. I had a bag of goofy stuff I shopped for in my office, and I wrote a set of five limericks for her, which of course, I read aloud several times. We had an interesting group of people: Regis and Amber, Gus, Mario, a couple of MVED folks, Nikki and Scott, and us. Lots of laughing and story telling so it was a good way to end a week of work. Work, the curse of the drinking class. Ha!

I'm kind of joking about our hedonistic ways, but I think most people spend way too much time thinking about their obligations and making sure that everyone else is happy but themselves. A guy has to have a well-developed instinct for self-preservation because nobody else is going to make sure that your needs are taken care of and you'll end up at the end of your life like an airless balloon, wishing you had spent more time seeking pleasure. That is a heck of a run-on sentence.

We have some friends who went off on a big adventure yesterday, a two-week cruise to the Panama Canal. I won't mention their names in case a deviant who reads my blog would be enticed to rob their house in their absence. I hope they have fun because it's a once in a lifetime deal, a cruise like that. 

I guess they are expensive, cruises. I had Regis read to me about them one night as I made dinner. There is a big charge to just get on board, then they start adding on the extras. I said we could go, intending to be frugal, and then three days into it we'd get bored and say screw it and revert to our hedonistic ways, eating and drinking with wild abandon.

It's not like we don't do anything for the common good. There are a lot of safer drivers in the elderly population because of us and Regis is signed up to help old people with their taxes. And I think spending my life educating Minnesota's criminal element ought to count for something.

We're heading into the darkest days of the year, folks. Time for a mental health action plan. Ours includes, but is not limited to:

• Party lights on every day at 4:00. Turkeys and hula girls.
• Candles lit every evening. Pumpkin scented..
• Music and lots of it. Mendelssohn, Delbert McClinton, Bob Dylan, Karen Savoca.
• Spicy food. Sirloin quesadillas with stuffed hot peppers.
• Trapiche malbec.
• Summit winter ale.
• Poetry. John Engman, David Lee, David Bengtson, Leo Dangel, Bill Holm.
• Parties. Lots of parties.
• Fish House Parade.
• Exercise. Jingle Bell Jam.
• Friends. See paragraph about last night.
• Little kids. Elliot here Tuesday night. Ella and Alex here Monday night.

There you go. Make it a good weekend, friends. Life is short.