Thanksgiving 2008

Here are some glimpses of my Thanksgiving Day experience.

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On Tuesday, November 25, I ran for 32 minutes at 8 mph on the treadmill at Gold’s Gym. I had been doing this for several weeks, and have been very grateful to have regained that level of fitness after battling through one injury or another since the summer of 2005. Later in the day on Tuesday my right foot started to hurt, and the pain increased through the day. After having hopefully learned something over the past few years, I shut down my running and exercise walking completely until the pain went away. Monday I walked for 32 minutes on the treadmill at 4 mph. Tuesday I walked to Gold’s Gym for a workout and back, partially covering my typical outside run. Wednesday I ran on the treadmill for 32 minutes at 5 mph. And on Thanksgiving Day I ran to and from Gold’s Gym for my workout – – not the full distance I normally run, not at the same pace, but I was running outside again. This is the first thing for which I was grateful.

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A friend and I drove down to Manti, Utah to celebrate Thanksgiving with friends. The Manti home is just blocks south of the beautiful Manti Temple of the LDS Church  (See http://www.lds.org/temples/main/0,11204,1912-1-39-0,00.html). Since the 1980s the LDS Church has had a temple in Denver. During my youth in Colorado, which just happens to have pre-dated the LDS temple in Denver, we were assigned to the Manti temple district. I went on 2 or 3 youth summer youth excursions to that temple during my youth. During one such visit we went to the temple fasting, then broke our fast by eating at the temple cafeteria – – in my mind that cafeteria has the best food of any temple cafeteria I have visited. Several times I have also been to a pageant held at the Manti temple. A few years ago I went to Manti when a cousin and her husband participated in an important ordinance there for their family.

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The home I visited in Manti is the house where A. Theodore Tuttle, who served as General Authority of the LDS Church, was raised.

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During the day I went to a Walmart in Ephraim, Utah, and then in Springville, Utah. There was no holiday break for those stores.

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During the course of the day I saw two movies and played one game of Scrabble. The first film was “What Women Want,” with Mel Gibson (meaning, he starred in the film). The second was “Akeelah and the Bee.” Here is the description of the movie as it appeared in the online television schedule: “An underachieving young student (Keke Palmer) from inner-city L.A. makes the grade as a national spelling-bee competitor in this uplifting charmer. Laurence Fishburne costars as her coach. Angela Bassett, Curtis Armstrong. Written and directed by Doug Atchison.” The movie was shown on Lifetime. I am grateful to have seen this movie, notwithstanding efforts to find other films at Walmart (including through the Red Box DVD rental kiosk, which always seems to have an impressively underwhelming collection of films) and on TV (I had intended to show a friend at least part of “The Godfather” which was showing on AMC, but that movie started an hour earlier than I had realized).

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I saw no football games as part of my Thanksgiving. These pro football games seem to become increasingly less interesting to me with each year that passes – – the game is changing, I am changing. In the past I remember a Thanksgiving in which our family and the Boyd and Lois Brown family joined the David M. Brown family for a Thanksgiving dinner at their home. On that day in 1974 the Dallas Cowboys beat the Washington Redskins with quarterback Clint Longley substituting for an injured Roger Staubach (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Longley). In 1978, at our own home, we watched the Denver Broncos lose to the Detroit Lions (use the search feature of this blog to find the account of my brother calling in to Denver talk radio personality Alan Berg that day). On November 28, 1985, my brother Scott and I drove from Provo, Utah to Petersboro, Utah to enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of Zeno and Mell Ree Andersen. We drove in my brother’s light blue VW bug, and on the way there listened to portions of the game between the Dallas Cowboys and St. Louis Cardinals (I recall the announcers discussing the play of Cardinals quarterback Neil Lomax and receiver Roy Green, and today saw that the Cowboys won that game 35 – 17. I think the date would check out, if my brother Scott reads this perhaps he could confirm. I remember at that dinner our Aunt Mell Ree and our cousin Coy had an interesting conversation about a talk at LDS General Conference by Elder Paul H. Dunn. I also recall that we left dinner that year through the shortcut through Honeyville, and got a little disoriented as it was already the dark of night and there was a heavy snow storm). Now that I am not watching these games as I had in the past, I’m afraid I am losing some reference points that help bring back memories.