Thomas Garcia: Giving thanks for family, friends

Staff Columnist

This Thanksgiving there was plenty of friends, food, football and of course snow.

There are many that are still recovering from the turkey hangover, myself and three particular cats included.

My cats, Toby and Brownie, were all too happy to enjoy portions of the delectable bird. Toby rejoiced by jumping on the chair and singing out ‘map’ and Brownie, well he just searched the carpet for more turkey and let out an occasional meow to let me know he wanted more.

My friend’s cat Opossum, was also transfixed by the holiday delicacy. In fact a few days before the holiday the cat was climbing up pant legs in search for the treat.

Opossum would enter the room and chirp to let her mom and others around know she would like some turkey.

I found the chirping adorable, as the closest to chirping Brownie comes to is throttling the toy bird repeatedly in the middle of the night.

Its been awhile since I wrote about the exploits of my two boys, rest assured they are in good health and still as ornery as their dad.

I spent the holiday with friends this year, my mother and father did not want to travel and were not up to cooking a holiday meal. They also did not like the idea of me traveling with the impending storm approaching.

I’m grateful for my friends including me in their holiday plans. There were a lot of memorable moments including some spirited games of Pictionary. Its all fun and games until you have to draw tuna fish or cardboard. Don’t worry Jake we’ll get them next year.

This year our friend “Lexi” introduced us to the Heads Up!, game developed by talk show host/movie star, Ellen Degeneres. Now, granted this game has been around for awhile, but for me it was like the first time I turned on the Simon game.

This game is so much fun, it combines the best of trivia, charades, Taboo and even Dance Fever.

We were laughing so much and so often that keeping score really didn’t matter. For the record, there was a score kept, the girls won.

It was such a blast, I introduced it to other friends later in the weekend and got them hooked as well.

I had such a good time this weekend that the snow and ice didn’t bother me as much as usual.

There were still times I yelled at drivers who forget that a layer of ice impedes their cars ability to come to a stop. This of course makes First Street and Route 66 into a large air hockey table.

I still don’t like the cold, but it didn’t seem so bad as I sat around the table surrounded by laughter and friends.

Thomas Garcia is a senior writer at the Quay County Sun. He can be reached at [email protected]