...and real pain for my sham friends. To be brutally honest, I don't usually have much time for Thanksgiving. I'm not much of a holiday person to begin with, and Thanksgiving really doesn't have the same spark as Santy Claus day does, but what the hell. I got to spend today with my family, some of whom I don't care for much, and others that I couldn't live without. I got to see my niece today, and a more brilliant 12 year old I'd be hard pressed to name. We talked about music and Harry Potter and her track team and she beat me in a race to the end of the block. She also told me the card I sent her, a card with a sketch of Christopher Robin and Pooh on the cover I sent her from Belgium this summer, is proudly hanging in her locker at school. So, I suppose I do have a lot to be thankfull for. A brilliant niece, good family, patient parents, and the best friends I could wish for. I'd rather have them here with me, as I type this, my monthly cigarette dangling from my mouth and the buzz of a few RB&V's fading away. But some of them are at their families, and some of them are scattered across the county, and some of them are even scattered across the world. If there's ever a time I doubt myself, or feel a bit down, the one thing I can do is look around at my friends, and I know anyone who can have the collection of friends I have isn't all bad. If the measure of a man is his friends, then all I can say is that I must have done *something* right in a past life to deserve my friends, and not a day goes by when I'm grateful for the lot of them. So, if you'll forgive me a bit of a soft moment, I'm feeling extremely grateful to all the wonderful friends I have and I have made, and I don't say lightly that if it wasn't for them I wouldn't be here. Anyways, a toast to all my friends, on the list and off, because it's the day to give thanks to the things that are important to us, and nothing could ever be more important than friends. A good deal of them aren't on the list, but to the ones that are, cheers. A tip of the glass especially to Laura Llew, Kirsten, Emily and Sean, Amy Longcore, Amy Bancroft, Sean and his sweetheart (the sister I *wish* I had) Elise Spry, ~stine, and to the whole bloody lot of you: Happy Thanksgiving. There, I promise the next post will see me back to my old cursing, cynical self. Cheers! Jim _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+