Wednesday's Day of Thanks

It's another morning and I have found that I look forward to this activity every morning. Lots to write about so lets cut in -

1. Love of Words - I don't believe a child is born with a love of reading or can appreciate the crafting of words. My father cultivated that love and appreciation in me. While other children were put to bed with Dr. Seuss rhymes or childrens books of 1, 2 lines per page, my father read my sister and I poetry. Some of it childrens poetry like,
The water came up so very quick
It couldn't have been quicker
I should have brought my hat along
I should have brought my slicker!
That would just slay us every night. But usually it was a made up story about the Beaver & The Otter but more often it was Robert Louis Stevenson. From there I grew up enjoying E.B. White and Louisa May Alcott as a young child and then moved right onto other classics. My mother even thought Robinson Crusoe would be a good gift for me on my 9th birthday.. Every year my father would try to get me to read John Updike and I just couldn't manage it. I remember by the time I was about 23 I could finally manage it without the dictionary on my lap and that felt like graduation for me. But I found through the values of my family the love of words. Just words as a stand alone mean a lot to me. Some of my favorite words... Beguile, Phenonmenon, Ephemeral, Actually, Linger, Azure. It's made my life a lot richer, made me more successful at work and unfortunately made me a bit sharp tongued at times.

2. Love of Words Foreign - If my father is responsible for giving me my love of written English, my mother is responsible for the gift of being multi-lingual to an oh-so-limited degree. I'm not big on grammar by any means, but I am thankful that I have been able to learn enough of other languages to get by than just english. Somewhere rolling around in my head is Thai, which according to family folklore I spoke relatively well. But I lost that at a young age. But my mother used to throw words at me in French, Italian and I would guess the meaning. From there I took six ans of French in school and university. Besides being able to converse, read and write in French, I know enough Spanish, Italian and German to get by comfortably. I also speak British and Scottish English. Scottish English involves liberal amounts of the 'f' word so you will only hear me speaking that in extreme anger or in Edinburgh. Usually the latter inspires the former, though. My favorite foreign words are: Entonces, de rien, arsed, hauptbahnhof, escribe, molto bene, va bene, prego (natch!!), apfelsaft, pero, et puis, bollocking, quinze.. I could go on!

3. The Daily Show on Comedy Central - Thank goodness for this daily dose of piss and vinegar! I love sarcasm and this show is steeped in it. If you want to only see the partisan view, you miss some of the bipartisan truth of the matter. It's a smart, funny show that is not funny if you're completely ignorant. Every morning when I have my cuppa, I watch the Daily Show and get myself edumacated.

4. XM Radio - Who is the wonderful soul who created XM Radio? It's the perfect invention for the Princess with ADD. If you want what you want, and you can't stay on one station when the commercials come on and have to flip around mericilessly until your stations comes back to playing music..well, XM Radio is for you. No commercials, themed stations and an opportunity to hear news, music and even TV shows from the US and all over the world. It's absolutely a brilliant thing to have though playing around with it can be a bit distracting in your car. My favorite stations on XM are U-Pop (Euro music), Frank's Place (Frank, Ella, Tony, etc), 80's (obvious), Mix, and Lucy (alternative rock).

5. Where I Was on 9/11 - I hadn't had this on my list of things to be thankful for until this morning when I woke up to the 5am news. The usual report from the airport day before T-Day was the lead story and they reported about the security measures and mentioned 9/11. We all knew where we were on 9/11. Most of America was at work, getting out of bed and eventually watched the horrible events unfold on TV. I was on an American Airlines flight from Chicago to Philadelphia and the whole thing happened while I enjoyed a second cup of coffee somewhere over Pennsylvania. That night when I finally was able to comprehend what had happened while I was suspended in air, I was unnerved to realize that my flight was among their options that morning. And I was utterly thankful and felt guilty that when the United and American Airlines schedules were perused, mine was not included and someone else's was. Thousands of flights left and landed safely that day, I reminded people of that who were scared to fly after that day. I keep my 9/11 boarding pass as a reminder of what almost happened, could have happened and didn't.

So there we go for today. Off to work I must. Today is a big day, I have a lunch with one of the executives and I have no idea why. I assume you don't get taken to lunch to get a bollocking but we'll see.