Grateful, pt 3

I've been giving this topic a lot of thought since starting this. I've also come up with some things I'm very ungrateful for, and will probably eventually do a companion piece about that. But onto gratefulness!

Cruglethor. I never came up with a better name for my car. I tried out "Carpe" but it seemed too cheesy. I always name vehicles with the same starting letter as their model, so I currently have Cruglethor the Civic. I bought her right after graduating college. Originally I had completely sold myself on getting an Accord and thought Civics were so ugly. Mostly the crazy slant of their front windshield. However, I found a beautiful 2009 with 7k miles on it. We've been through so much together and I am SO grateful I picked her out 4 years ago! She's been so reliable and just great, and I know I've put her through a lot. Right after getting her I drove down to DC with tons of stops to/from. Then, a couple weeks later, I packed her up and drove her across the country with my brother (please please please read about our adventures here, written by Kevin/Tug/my brother). She's taken me on countless Seattle and coast trips, a handful of California trips, and everywhere in between. And saved me from a few deer and kept on running. Cruglethor has made so many adventures possible and I feel like I need to come up with some exciting way of commemorating her 100k (which should happen by the end of year, we're at 94k already in just over 4 years)(I drive a lot, hence my gratefulness for her).

Ugh snow. Beautiful Cruglethor though!

Books. This kind of goes along with the gratefulness for music. I read a lot in spurts, but my bookshelves are bursting at the seems with exciting choices. It's so hard to live this close to Powell's and not be constantly buying things. Reading is so great. It can take you to a completely surreal place, describe things you could never imagine on your own, and be able to make you feel things that can be so outside your realm or describe something you're going through perfectly. I remember being in high school and doing book reports - senior year you had to do 3, but could be pretty much any book you wanted. The thing that sticks out to me is realizing that I OWN this book. I can write in it, I can highlight it, I can leave my own notes in it. This may not seem like some huge revelation to some of you, but it was to me, and still kind of is. I underline passages that are meaningful to me, I write page numbers in the back, and I scrawl notes in the margins. There are some specific books I go back to at certain times and know there passages or notes I want to re-read that may currently be helpful to me. There are some books that are super meaningful to me that I've written all over and I'd never let somebody borrow because of the same reason I don't share some music - too personal, too private. I'm grateful books can do that for me. On a larger scale, I'm grateful I have the ability to read and enjoy books, and thankful I had parents who encouraged me to enjoy reading.

24 Hour Stores. Or stores open late or on holidays. My pharmacy only closes on Thanksgiving and Christmas, which sucks, but I am SO grateful for those people who work holidays. I do NOT think that people should work on major holidays like that, and I make it a very specific point to not go shopping on holidays. However, there have been times where I needed to go buy something on a holiday. My clearest memory is this past Christmas when my smoke detector battery started beeping incessantly at me. I went to a 24-hour store to buy a battery and made it a point to thank every person I saw working. When I can, I try to volunteer for holidays so that others with family in the area they want to spend time with are able to do that. Also, sometimes I get out of work late or far away, and appreciate going to a store that's open when I get home.

Games. Board games and Holy Board made up the vast majority of my summers for a few years. I feel like while my friends were out getting drunk and doing stupid stuff in Albany, I came home, worked, and hung out with my brothers and hometown friends. At least once a week we would have people over and play Holy Board (a game with washers our Uncle introduced to us) and various board games - our favorites being Apples to Apples and Balderdash. Sometimes Cranium. And Price Chopper! And often get IGA chicken wing pizza (BEST STUFF EVER). Holy Board Summer League was so epic! We had our own teams, tournaments, and theme nights, and it was so fun getting everybody together once a week. We even had t-shirts and keychains made and had a pretty eventful Holy-Boardapalooza.

Kevin displaying our shirts. And his mustache for our Holy Board calendar.

I'm grateful for the memories of those summers (and winter gatherings we had), being able to spend time with my brothers and friends, and some of those nights were the hardest I've ever laughed! I still have my mini-washer keychain on my keys, even if the paint has completely faded! I also remember one time Andy and I took our Holy Boards and played all around the Hobart campus before Kevin became a student there. Just lugging those bad boys around from open field to open field! They were always a hit at graduation parties, too. Such awesome memories!

That's it for today. My next one might get a bit sappy... fair warning.