Thanksgiving 2020

As we celebrate what will hopefully be the most unusual Thanksgiving any of us will ever experience, I can’t help but reflect on the fact that all things considered we have come through this year in pretty good shape. Nobody in my immediate family has contracted COVID-19 and nobody I know personally has had worse than a mild case of it. Everything after that is gravy; tasty, tasty, gravy.

Sorry, thinking about dinner already.

Back in Spring in the early days of the pandemic Breck & I went hiking at a nearby state park and saw people camping there. That got me thinking about campers, something I had done off an on for our entire married life. However, this time we didn’t have the complicating factor of only having time for one or two camping trips a summer due to baseball, fencing, horses, etc. I'm also no longer paying for fencing and a horse, or college, which helps. So I floated the idea to Michelle and started researching. I honestly thought it was a fantasy and wouldn’t amount to more than giving me something to dream about for awhile. However maybe a week later Michelle surprised me by saying she thought it was a good idea. A month or so later we owned a camper, and we logged about 30 nights this summer and fall camping, and already have about 2 weeks worth of camping booked for 2021, plus I’ve got a calendar reminder to not miss the window to book a beachfront campsite in Key West for December 2021.

That 45-minute drive Breck and I took to spend an afternoon hiking changed our lives. It made the pandemic summer much more bearable by giving us a safe outlet away, and it may change the course of our lives as the long planned move to the beach may be replaced (for a few years anyway) by a move west. I can live anywhere and do my job so it seems almost silly to not take the opportunity to go on a grand adventure and explore the other side of the country. Research has settled on Albuquerque as checking all the boxes in terms of climate, cost of living, sports, concerts, etc. Of course, if you had asked me in 2018 what I’d be doing 2020 I would have been wrong, so who knows about 2022? If life is returning to normal by fall we hope to take a trip to scout the ABQ area as a potential home, for a few years anyway.

Speaking of jobs, I’m also thankful mine has been stable throughout all of this and that I already worked from home anyway. Michelle took the year off to avoid the virus and thankfully my job makes that possible for us. And both kids are employed too.

So career good, family good, life good (considering the circumstances.) I have much to be thankful for. Science appears to be delivering on a vaccine so hopefully by the summer we’ll all have our two shots and life will be returning to normal. Camping is great, camping and attending nearby baseball or soccer games, or concerts, would be even better.

Peace.

Update: My wife reminded me that I do know somebody that was pretty damn sick from COVID-19.