I love...being thankful.

This Thanksgiving I had a lot to be thankful for:

My family

My friends

My new car, Tootsie

Pizza

Prince

Leopard print

Carly Rae Jepsen

Bubblewrap

The word "love"

Laughing

Jimmy Fallon

Blue Gatorade

The ability to j/k

Heart shapes

Empty gyms

Instagram

The #37

Pillows

The list goes on and on...so I'll just pick out a few to discuss here:

My family
My family alternates between three different relatives' homes that host Thanksgiving. It's the one time of year that we get together with aunts, uncles and cousins to catch up and laugh our faces off. This year it was at my aunt & uncle's house in Cincinnati. Unfortunately I wasn't able to go to Cincy to be with everyone this particular year, so my parents were nice enough to drive up to the CLE to have dinner on Thanksgiving-eve with me and my sister Lisa. We went to Light Bistro in Ohio City. The food was delish and we had a lot of laughs as we discussed everything from confit to the time my mom and I got in the wrong van in a store parking lot. Then Thanksgiving morning they all headed down to Cincy to see the rest of my fam for the weekend. Fortunately I'll be able to see them all in February at my cousin's wedding - thank goodness for love!

Empty gyms
After sleeping in a bit I woke up on Thanksgiving morning, watched some of the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, then got the urge to go to the gym (in anticipation of what I would be eating later in the day). My gym has 24-hour access and upon entering I found that I was the only person who had this "go to the gym on Thanksgiving" idea. I had the place to myself! I decided to use this opportunity to do all the things I don't normally do at the gym when other people are there.

As I started running on the treadmill a Beyonce song came on my iPod and I was inspired to see if I could run, dance and sing like Beyonce all at the same time while keeping my breath. I could! Well, for a few minutes at least.

Once my treadmill concert was done I decided to attempt playing with the big ropey things. They're those large ropes that are bolted to the ground and you're supposed to work out with them...somehow. I'd never tried them before, cause there are usually too many people around and I don't understand what I'm supposed to do with them. I picked them up and shook them up and down. I twisted them in circles. I crisscrossed them. I still didn't know what I was doing, but I was sure I was getting stronger-ish.

Then I went downstairs to the weight room. I'd used the room before, only a few of the machines that are close to the front - some arm ones, the leg ones. Today, since I had the whole room to myself, I did what I've never done before...I walked all the way to the back of the weight room! It was amazing- there was a different floor back there. Then I saw it, a large silver bowl full of chalk! This changed everything. I now know that I'm welcome in the weight area anytime. They have chalk there, I'm Chalk...get it? In fact, even though I'm sitting at a coffee shop typing this right now...it's good to know that I'm actually at the gym right now, too. I feel even stronger!

My friends
There is a lot to say about this topic. I often stop and think about how lucky I am because of the great friends I've met in my life. I've met so many people who are kind, thoughtful, hilarious, fun, helpful, caring, and did I mention hilarious? Instead of going through all of those people in this post, I'd like to touch on one instance of friendship over this Thanksgiving holiday.

As I mentioned earlier, I wasn't able to join my family in Cincinnati for the holiday dinner. Upon hearing this my friend Colleen immediately invited me to join her and her family for dinner. (And after that, several other friends also invited me if I still needed a place to go.) So I joined her, her boyfriend and her family that evening. We drank wine, sampled cheese, discussed fingernails and movies while researching topics on our phones, and then we ate...everything from turkey to rutabaga to pumpkin pie...to anything else that falls in between at a Thanksgiving feast. It was a wonderful dinner, accented perfectly by the tiny salt & pepper shakers that we each had at our own seat.


I hope you had and are having a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday with family, friends, and possibly your own personal gym for an hour or so. Go ahead, shake those ropes...and if you need me, I'll be in the weight room.

I love...Thanksgiving.

"Bloggle, bloggle!" That's the sound I think my blog would make if it was a turkey.

But my blog is not a turkey, it's a blog. That's why tonight the sound coming out of my blog is "type, type, type" as I recap a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. A lot happened, so grab some leftovers, sit back and get ready to use those fancy reading skills...

Wednesday night (Thanksgiving Eve) I went to a birthday dinner with some friends at Crop's new location in Ohio City. The space is awesome and the food was yummy. After dinner we went to Market Avenue Wine Bar for another drink. There we saw a man that we were pretty sure was Cleveland Browns' player Peyton Hillis. As he left I joked that it wasn't him because he wasn't holding a football and he was wearing a belt. My friends pointed out that football players wear belts while they're playing. I suggested they should instead wear some sort of bodysuits. As we discussed the "belt vs. bodysuit" topic we lost track of the Mr. maybe-Hillis, and that was that. Later on we said our goodbyes and I found out that some other friends were nearby at Dragonfly. I stopped by to say hello, danced a quick salsa dance, then we walked down the street to Speakeasy to dance some more, and then we walked around the corner to Touch to dance even more. Looking back, this night of dancing was the perfect way to prepare for the day of eating that was to follow.

Thursday morning my sister Lisa picked me up and we headed to the airport to fly out to Washington, DC where our aunt and uncle live. At the airport ticket kiosk I went to enter the first three letters of my destination city and my sister and I were quite amused when the option of "Batman" appeared on the screen (mainly because of this Crank Yankers phone call that my sisters and I are obsessed with). After the flight, our parents picked us up and we went to our hotel to freshen up before dinner. There we were greeted by our sister Susan and two of her kids, Sean & Ryleigh (we missed you, Bill & Conor!). Ryleigh has finally remembered my name without prompting, which made my afternoon as she ran down the hall yelling "Aunt Jenny". We all squeezed into my parents' van and headed to our Aunt Rosemary and Uncle Mike's house. I walked in carrying a cooler my parents had packed up, which resulted in my relatives asking if I was ready for a Thanksgiving tailgate (actually, it didn't sound like a bad idea). I helped in the kitchen by rolling the crescent rolls with Lisa (a stressful and important job) and filling the water pitchers. Not to toot my own horn, but that was some of the best bread and water any Thanksgiving has ever seen! We ate, we drank, we Thanksgiving-ed it up.

On Friday everyone did their own thing during the day. Lisa and I visited the National Portrait Gallery, then wandered a bit and visited the very rarely seen Starbucks. That evening all of our cousins met up for happy hour in the Georgetown area. Then we headed back to our aunt's house for some pizza, which was eventually followed by our goodbyes since we were all headed our separate ways on Saturday morning.

The 2011 Thanksgiving weekend is now drawing to a close and I'm thankful for every deliciously wonderful part of it, from my friends to my family to the dancing to the laughs.

I hope your holiday was deliciously wonderful, too!