Thanksgiving 2023

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Another Tranksgiving Holiday has come and gone. No travel this year over the holidays as we normally do. Interesting travel is being planned. We decided NOT to participate in The Macy's Day Parade this year. We had some small regret perhaps, but we marched in the parade two years in a row. We are convinced there would NOT be sufficient novelty in the third year.

We invited Vlad over for a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner, roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, tossed salad, sweet corn, cranberries and pumpkin pie for dessert. Angie was trying to make her deadline in creating subtitles for some Netflix shows. I made dinner, no issues at all. A pic shows a symptom of excess. The small roaster pan was my grandmother's. The large one was the one I just bought. A modern turkey won't fit in the old one... maybe a cornish game hen or a chicken will, but you would be hard pressed to find a turkey as small as what was available 50 or 70 years ago. Turkeys are larger. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average domestic turkey is about 29 pounds today, compared to 13 pounds in 1929. Turkey size reference (I couldnt find the stat with the USDA... trust usnews.com as appropriate).

I decided to get rid of the old deck in the way I am very practiced. I am throwing it away piece by piece every week in the regular garbage. The pile is definately getting smaller. I remember throwing out a volkswagen years ago with the use of sawzall and Starrett "Hackmaster" blades. I still have the car title. It wasn't "junked" in the modern ways. The barn I torn down in Victor, NY didn't go out in the garbage, but made it to the town dump via many pickup truck loads and was burned over many months. The gradual disposal technique is a great way to expereince "The law of accumulation", but in reverse. The stuff we do over time accumulates relentlessly and will overcome all adversity. Financial accumulation works in precisely the same way and is known as "dollar-cost averaging". Buying (and selling) small amounts over long periods of time yields significant low-risk returns. Similar principle. Other examples are the accumulated cost of a dripping faucet or the wear and tear of items on a ship subject to the unrelenting movements 24/7.

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