Happy Thanksgiving!

The word 'snow', as in "chances for snow", has been uttered for the first time this year in the weather forecast for this Thanksgiving night!  Wouldn't it be great if it were true?!  We are going to Kirk's colleagues, Mark and Joan's house for Thanksgiving dinner and I will be keeping my eyes at the windows at dinner so as not to miss the first indication of falling snow.  Besides, we are now properly geared up to face the snow challenges, with the mighty snow shovel and scraper for the car windows.




Another bit of evidence that we have settled in was that we've gone to our first IU basketball game last night at the Assembly Hall.  Out of the blue our next-door neighbor, Mr. Sam Bell, the famous retired IU track coach, http://www.usatf.org/halloffame/TF/showBio.asp?HOFIDs=16, came over yesterday afternoon and gave me two tickets to the basketball game!  It seems that we've somehow managed to live next-door to people who have season tickets to sporting events but cannot make it to the games all the time.  (To wit, the couple who live in south Florida but keep a pad across from our house in Golf View just to go to Gators games.)  

The basketball game, though not as full of pageantry as those in O-Dome, was a lot of fun.  IU has had a very illustrious history in basketball under the reign of Bobby Knight, the winning-est and most controversial coach of NCAA Basketball, who was fired by IU in fall 2000 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Knight.  During the game they have this "Big Heads" thing - fans waving big cardboard faces of cheesy entertainers at the opponent players behind the backboard during free throws - which was something else!  Compared to what the Gators fans do, i.e., waving skimpy bikinis, this seems like a more tasteful thing to do. 

Finally, after forty some years, I've got to learn to play the piano!  It is like learning a new language at this time of my life but, I suspect, probably not as difficult as learning, say, German or Russian.  You're probably wondering what those disfiguring marks are on the keyboard.  Well, those are drafting dots with inked letters on them to help me memorize the names of the keys; not a very kosher thing to do to a piano, to be sure.  As you know, there is a piano in the basement which comes with the house we bought.  As it turns out it is more like a painted, 'crippled' (two of the pedals being broken), maiden, trapped in the basement of the house.  I had it looked at and learned that the reason why the piano, I suspect, as well as the billiard table, was offered free with the house was probably because that it was not possible to be moved upstairs without first being taken apart.  The piano technician told me that as it is the piano is worth about $250 and I can have it refurbished and tuned for about $1000 but it would only then raise its value to about $500 and I'd never be able to get it out of the basement without having it taken apart!  He strongly recommended against my doing anything about it but learning to play it.  According to him, though sounding flat, all the keys work.  I have since been taking piano lessons once a week and practicing about an hour every day.  


I hope y'all have a great Thanksgiving wherever you are.  Be safe and enjoy the festive occasion.  I will be singing and dreaming, let it snow, let it snow ...