Ed Icionsub

The weather forecast for Thanksgiving included the chance of snow flurries for this are. I’m so glad they were wrong – I’m sure it would have made an already stressful travel day even that much more stressful and dangerous.

However, it would be nice to have some snow over the holidays. Usually we have to take a weekend trip to North Carolina or West Virginia to get enough snow to participate in any winter sports. Last year we went to West Virginia for a couple of days and I went snowmobiling for the first time. It was awesome – we are planning to go again at least once this winter.

No one can believe that the Titans have burst out of their 6 game losing streak and managed to win the last five games. It has been a total transformation. I have to give Coach Fisher a lot of credit for digging in and working hard at turning it all around.

Today’s game against the Arizona Cardinals was a nail biter. The Titans won by a touchdown in the last 30 seconds of regulation play. They are calling it Vince Young’s “Music City Miracle.” Now, that’s funny!

We had a real feast yesterday – all my favorite foods for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey was about 26 pounds – really big. We put it into one of those big Reynolds Roasting Bags with a chopped up onion and some butter and let it cook for a couple hours. No basting, no overcooking and dried out white meat. No mess. Lots of juice for the gravy. It turned out magnificent.

Side dishes included mashed white potatoes with turkey gravy, sweet potatoes with lots of mini-marshmallows on top, corn pudding, fresh green beans with ham, flaky dinner rolls and two pies with a choice of sugar free cool whip or no sugar added ice cream.

The only thing we forgot was the stuffing and the cranberry sauce. So we are fixing those today and heating up some of the leftovers with the new items to make the meal seem fresh.

Tomorrow, if there is any turkey left, I hope the wife makes her famous creamed turkey over rice. I think you call it Turkey A La King, but I’m not sure if her version has an actual recipe name. I just know she does it right with a white gravy, green peas and a few secret ingredients. That is sooooooo good on a cold day!

Poking around the internet radio stations, I found a great Jazz station based in San Diego, Smooth Jazz98.1,KIFM. They have a live streaming available that is free and easy to use, so I gave them a listen. I really like this station – they have all the jazz artists that I like and a good mix of songs. Here is just part of their playlist:

11:35   “It Must’ve Been Ol’ Sant” – Harry Connick Jr

11:32   “Talk Of The Town” – Darren Rahn

11:27   “Sleepwalk” – Larry Carlton

11:23   “Who Will Comfort Me” – Melody Gardot

11:20   “Open Your Heart” – Nite Flyte

11:11   “What Does It Take” – Peter White

11:09   “Jingle Bells” – Diana Krall

11:05   “Burnin’” – Paul Taylor

11:01   “Cream” – Soul Ballet

10:57   “Upside Down” – Jack Johnson

10:52   “Peace On Earth” – Paul Hardcastle

10:41   “Local Hero” – Yellowjackets

10:37   “No Ordinary Love” – Sade

10:33   “Santa Claus Is Coming” – Chris Botti

10:29   “I’ll Be Good To You” – Boney James

10:25   “Say” – John Mayer

If interested in listening on your own PC or laptop, go to their home page and click on the top left menu, “Listen Live” or click here.

The Christmas shopping season is gearing up for this years buying spree. Most of the big stores who have championed “Black Friday” for years have decided to push their “Black Friday” up a couple of weeks and jumpstart the season with two more weekends of sales and special deals.

The grocery store has a bell ringer outside the entrance door already. The grocery store is also selling fresh cut frazier fir trees now. I think this is just too early to buy a cut tree and put it inside a house. Christmas is still 5 weeks away. That’s a long time for a cut tree to have to keep its needles.

One thing that it is not too early to consider purchasing is the Christmas cards for this year’s mailing to friends and family. I like the idea of ordering my cards online. The online greeting card printing is the same good quality printing that you used to have to order from a stationery store. But now you can go the psprint.com and pick from a huge assortment of card designs and place your order from the comfort of your own home. Choosing the inside greeting and placing the order is fast and easy.

Weekends are getting more precious – especially the days that we don’t have rain. Since the weather forecast is for rain tomorrow, we decided to get outside today and rake as many leaves as we could. We ran out of leaf bags and had to just leave huge piles of the leaves in the side yard. Hopefully I can get out to the store and buy more bags before it starts raining so we can get the leaves up off the grass.

All the women are abuzz today. Not only is the new Twilight movie in theaters, but Oprah has tearfully announced that she is quitting her TV show. It’s been a rough couple of days for estrogen.

Oprah is a huge empire of TV shows, movies, a magazine and who knows what all. When Oprah says that she likes something, there is an immediate surge in interest for that product. For example, this press release details a Christmas gift idea that Oprah has endorsed in her monthly magazine.

The idea behind the gift card is that you can customize the card with a photo of yourself, your family, your dog, your company logo – just about any graphic that you want to upload and print on the card. So it is a very personal gift idea.

Just about every teenage girl that I know and their moms are all excited about today. They’ve all been counting down the days to the USA premiere of the second vampire movie, Twilight: New Moon.

I did watch the first movie. It was pretty good. I don’t think it was worth all the hype we are getting for this series of books about a clumsy, silly high school girl and her vampire boyfriend.

We will soon find out if this new movie is as good as the first one – my daughter and wife are going tonight to the 11:00 pm showing. It was the first one they could buy advance tickets to see – the earlier shows have been sold out for two weeks.

When my brother had his martial arts studio in Virginia, he had enough students to make it worthwhile to run classes each night during the week and then three classes on Saturdays. The only problem with running the studio himself is that he never to got to take a day off. So he had to train and use another teacher to help out. Once he had some help, he was able to start competing and taking his best students to competitions.

Once you get to the advanced levels, you learn how to use different weapons and need to buy Martial Arts Equipment like padding and some of the weapons. His studio sold some of the basic things but when he needed special equipment he would get online to find the right things and have them shipped to his home.He began a nice collection of weapons and trophies as he advanced through each fighting level.

Thinking back on all those fights, I think he did a great job in each of the competitions and he taught quite a few students who went on to win championships, too. When he suffered his stroke, the hardest thing for him was admitting that he would not be able to teach karate any longer. Letting go of the studio was probably the saddest day in his life.

I still think of him when I drive by the area where his studio is being used by the teachers he trained. I’m glad to see his dreams and life’s work continue to help others even after he has passed.