A list of thanks giving

 When I was younger, we had so many traditions at Thanksgiving and Christmas. On Thanksgiving morning, we usually watched the parade on TV, we got up early to bake and cook our last minute dishes, and then we always went to Aunt Janice and Uncle Herb’s house for dinner. I remember sitting around Janice’s beautifully laid out dinner and taking turns sharing what we were thankful for that year. Of course, now that my sister and I are older and we have lived out of the house, many of our holidays have been less about upholding tradition and more about just being together.

One tradition I want to bring back today, though, is giving thanks. Especially this Thanksgiving, Gabe and I have much to be thankful for, and we want to share that with you today. And maybe, we can start our own little tradition.

So here it is, Gabe and Kalene’s first annual list of thanks giving:

1. We are first of all thankful for GPSs and mapquest on iPhones. Neither Gabe nor I ever know where we are or where we are going, so we get lost…a lot. But now, with Gabe’s handy iPhone (thanks are in order to you, Steve Jobs!), we don’t get lost quite as often. We still don’t know where we are, but at least we’re being told where we are going. However, even GPSs and mapquest cannot always reliably track our location in Pittsburgh’s mangled street system. Once, picking up Gabe at school (I didn’t start from our apartment, so give me some credit) took me an hour rather than twenty minutes, even though my dad was on the phone with me telling me which turns to make. But still, despite the unreliability of technology at times, we are thankful that we spend less time getting lost. 
2. We are also thankful for the experiences Gabe has had since he started school here. In October, Gabe was able to go to a networking conference in New York City. He was able to meet with many different companies for potential internships, but he was also able to tour NBC studios and see the sets of shows like Saturday Night Live, The Good Wife, Pan Am, and Boardwalk Empire. He also had the opportunity to be a production assistant on a commercial that aired on ESPN before the Texas vs. Texas A & M game on Thanksgiving. Even though he had to be on set for about twenty straight hours, working behind the scenes on a commercial and then seeing it air on TV has probably been one of Gabe’s favorite experiences this year. It didn’t hurt that he was able to meet and have a conversation with Tom Cruise, who starred in the commercial.

3. In many ways, Gabe and I feel like we are still poor, lowly college students—except now one of us is a poor, lowly grad student—so we are both thankful for my job. No, I am not discussing nineteenth century British lit every day or editing (or writing) the next great American novel, but I am glad to be at a consistent job with coworkers whom I enjoy. I also am glad to be at a company that is able to break up the mundane of the everyday with office drama. A few weeks ago, all of the employees had to evacuate the building when several people went to the hospital from a strong chemical smell in the downstairs lunchroom. Within thirty minutes of our evacuation, a dozen ambulance trucks and three news stations were parked in the Justifacts parking lot. The most hilarious part now, and the worst part at the time, was that even after about fourteen of our employees went to the emergency room, the rest of us still had to go back into the building and work the rest of the day after the ambulances left. It probably goes without saying that not much work got done that day. At a job that involves doing background checks, my work usually keeps me pretty interested, but these little incidents have certainly helped to make it a job that holds my attention.

You can see that story and newscast done by one of the local Pittsburgh stations at http://www.wpxi.com/news/29674666/detail.html. (You can even see me in the background of one the shots!)

4. What we are the most thankful for this holiday season is our family and friends. We are still amazed at the help that our friends and our family provided to us to get us here to Pittsburgh. But what many of them do not know is that their love and support has given us the encouragement we need to stay here and finish what we set out to do. So, thank you for reading, for being interested in our lives, and most of all, for being there for us even from afar.