What are you thankful for?

Today is Thanksgiving in the US of A, celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. I'm afraid I missed Canada's Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October...and for that I sincerely apologise!

I realised that, despite considering myself quite an intelligent and worldy wise human being....I know absolutely bugger all about Thanksgiving, apart from the fact that you must eat turkey until you feel you might burst. So I thought I'd do a bit of research:

- Thanksgiving is a harvest festival. It's the traditional time of year to give thanks for the harvest and to express gratitude in general.

We used to have Harvest Festivals at school, I guess this would have been around the same time of year. If I remember correctly we all used to bring a food item in from home and put them into baskets to take around to the old peoples home. I bet they loved that...screaming brats running around lobbing tins of SPAM at them. A kindness they could well do without.

- The First Thanksgiving according to American folklore is believed to have been performed by the Plymouth Colony at the Plymouth Plantation in 1621. It was in order to give thanks to God for a successful harvest and for seeing the pilgrims through a harsh winter. The feast lasted for 3 days and fed 53 pilgrims and 90 indians.

- Although Thanksgiving has religious roots, it's now considered a secular festival....WIN!

I suppose this is similar to Easter, try sitting todays child down and talking about the true meaning of Easter:

'Now, Tommy, do you know about how Jesus died on the cross for you?'

'I didun't DO it!'

'No, I know Tommy, he did it for ALL of us'

'I don't know no Jesus! And WHARRS MY CHOKLIT EGG???'

Eventually all festivals will become secular, not for the right reasons, but through the sheer idiocy of those bringing up children.

- I'm ecstatic to have learned about the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation. Every Thanksgiving, the National Turkey Federation presents the US President with two dressed turkeys and one live one. The live turkey is pardoned and sent away to a peaceful farm where it eventually dies happily, presumably of old age. Barak Obama honoured the tradition this year by pardoning a turkey named Courage for 26th November. Apparently in recent years, there have been 2 live turkeys presented, incase one unexpectedly become unavailable for Presidential pardoning. You know, a very important conference call or something.

I love that, I love that so much. I hope they all go to the same farm where they can swap stories about Presidents. I imagine poor overworked farm hands slaving over spoilt, mollycoddled Diva-turkeys wearing Gucci sunglasses.

- American Football is a Thanksgiving tradition, with professional games being played on Thanksgiving day. The National Football League has hosted games every year since it was founded...barring the WW2 years.

Another tradition is to think about what you're thankful for:

My amazing friends and family, special thanks to Nicki and Jobie

The fact that I'm in a job that I actually really enjoy

That I'm in a position to be able to organise and fund perspective-altering travels next year

The roof over my head

That I haven't felt sad enough to cry in a VERY long time

What are you thankful for today?

Img cred

Thanks to Wiki

The Posse

I'm feeling better now, avid follower :o) Friday evenings do a lot for the chill factor!!

I thought I'd do some little blogs about me, on the offchance that someone stumbles across this and might be interested, you never know, I might become famous!!!

I'll start off with work, much as we try to ignore it, we do spend most of our waking hours at work. I'm lucky in that I enjoy my job and work with some fab people. Apart from the getting up in the morning bit I can't say I have much to complain about! So I work at UCL in the Division of Biosciences as it is now known, estates and buildings stuff, not academia. I've been there for about 3 years now.

Over those 3 years, four of us at work have developed a little 'Posse', I think it was Linda who started calling us that. We're a strange little group, and my facebook mates often wonder who these people are in most of my photos! We're a bit of living proof that you don't have to be similar to be really good mates.

We've got Big Boy as he is affectionately known, or Greg, he's the subject of my digestive updates :o). Big, welsh, opinonated, semi-vegetarian, real ale lover, bit of a perve and pretends to be much grumpier than he really is. He's very funny and can take it as well as dish it out. Oh, and he harbours a hatred for home-baked goods that people bring into work, a nasty, dirty hatred. With Greg every conversation ends up on sex or shit....usually not both.

Now we have Linda, Noise or Marlborough Grey, depending on who you're talking to. She's the physical opposite of our Big Boy, slim but not petite, you simply cannot miss Linda if she's in the room, she's a natterer!! We discovered in Dublin that if you walk her all day, then feed her a big meal and get a couple of drinks down her then she goes all quiet....but how much time, money and energy would that take?? She's recently discovered a passion for unpaid leave and the electric cinema :o), not quite as mad a drinker, but matches Greg with halves.

Both those guys are in their 40's and going 'translucent' as Greg would argue

Then we have the Wiluf, just turned 60 and proud of it, you'd never know. If you've heard of the place Wilf has probably been there, having travelled round the world on various ships in his navy career. He's also a photographer and a foodie, and an eternal batchelor. Brandy is his drink of choice on a pub crawl. Wilfie lives quite a healthy lifestyle (apart from the drinking we thrust upon him...apparently....I got the blame the last time :o)), but then he's had more time to come around. Convo's with Wilf usually come around to food or a funny story about a friend in another country!

Then there's me......I'm not sure if I have a nickname, but I have been informed that Greg has taken to calling me 'slaaaaaaaaaaaag' behind my back........which is nice. 25, I like a bloody good drink and do my best to keep up with Greg, to my detriment! Like my food too much, I'm pretty liberal, love travelling when I have the dough, a beer drinker and talk quite a bit, though not as much as our Linda.

Both Wilf and I have 'drunk hair', the more pissed we get the scruffier our hair gets. Wilf may kill me for that picture...enjoy as I may have to change it!!

So we have much fun and laughs together, various pub crawls, day trips and weekends abroad. We do get some funny looks sometimes....especially when we're wandering along the Thames pissed as farts at about 8pm when everyone else is just going out.....

Out of interest I looked up a little bit of info on the psychology of friendship, and apparently one of the main criteria is the 'breadth and depth of self-disclosure' and the reciprocation of it.

.....So there we go, basically, we all like talking bollocks about ourselves...and listening to each others bollocks too :o). The recipe for a perfect Posse......