I have many things to be thankful for. The first thing I am thankful for is my family. My parents have been extremely loving and supportive throughout my life. The gifts they have given me in terms of skills, attitudes and perspectives have been invaluable. I am also thankful for my sister. She always has a way of making everything beautiful. My friends also have been a very supportive force in my life that I am thankful for. Whenever I feel bad, I think about my wonderful family and the friends. Sometimes I feel sad about the friends that I don't see quite as much anymore, but I give thanks for everything they have taught me through direct interaction and reflection.
This Thanksgiving, I went to Silver City. My friend Oleg came down for the amazing Thanksgiving dinner my mom made (the baked broccoli with blue cheese, and the turkey legs, were my favorite) and to help on a construction project.
My father is converting an old shop into a guest house. Over the Thanksgiving break, we build the frame for the floor to sit on.
Oleg helping prepare the masonry wall for a supporting 2x10.
This kid is named James. He is probably the best worker I have ever seen help at my parent's place. He's an expert welder, and also quite skilled at general construction. He single handedly anchored all of the supports into the masonry with my dad's hammer drill as well as helped out with all of the other construction.
However, Oleg Semenov does not like to be explicitly identified on my blog, and he decided to use violence to coerce this citizen journalist into silence. The below images provide photographic evidence.
Everything is all framed in. None of this will be visible whatsoever when the floor is put on, and the walls are up.
The framing project was a nice way to spend time with my friends and family over the holiday weekend. Of course, as a good American, it is important to celebrate Consumptionmas. This year for Consumptionmas, I purchased a laptop for $400 from Walmart. Such... Low... Prices... My father was especially interested in my Consumptionmas plans this year, and he was kind enough to go to Walmart for me after he finished his work in Silver City early in the morning while I was still asleep. The Consumptionmas revelers were out in such force, that by about 7:00 a.m. my father purchased the second-to-last laptop for me. My budget was around $400, and I am very satisfied I was able to spend barely over $400 and get this laptop.
Probably the most fun part of the trip was dancing with Jennifer at the amazing Flame Convention Center in Silver City. The Flame is a gigantic metal building with three or so partitions. I believe each partition contains a bar, and can basically be it's own venue relatively independently of the other partitions. During the weekend festivities, two of the partitions were combined. Jennifer knows my family, and our parents know each other, but this was the first time we met. She is extremely into Latin dancing. Thanks to David Romero down in Socorro from my days at New Mexico Tech, I am decent enough at salsa dancing to be able to improvise my swing dancing moves in without feeling completely retarded. Of course, drinking alcohol before hand always helps *with the way one perceives* dancing. *May not actually help with the reality of dancing.
No trip to Silver City is complete without visiting my uncle, Rob Stinar. It's always nice stopping by to see how he's doing.
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