Back from Lockhart, Texas and yet another Thanksgiving. The usual generous portions of fowl, potatoes, and dysfunction.

A few odds and ends to note:

• The Dairy Queen in my hometown now has Wi-Fi access. The Dairy Queen...you know, the place in every small Texas town where the old-timers go to have their afternoon coffee and gossip. The place of the Country Basket and the Dip Cone. We have truly entered the information age, my friends.
  
• Last year my Uncle Herb regaled me with the rambling story of a squirrel that he and his firefighting buddies used to feed every morning (and ended the story with the grisly end of said squirrel). This year, an offhand comment about immunizations set his ticker off on a story of how he received triple doses of immunizations (because of sloppy Army record-keeping) along the trail of being shipped off to Korea. He went on for a good ten minutes, with only myself in earshot, and would have kept going had we not been called to the dinner table.
  
• In a gas station on the way home, while stopping to use the bathroom, there was a machine with the usual assortment of condoms, with one strange addition. "NOW FEATURING THE BIN LADEN CONDOM" it read above one coin slot. Were there Hitler condoms? Tojo condoms? I don't know about you guys, but sex is usually a complicated enough affair without slipping the image of the #1 wanted terrorist figure over the tip of my willy. Toilet paper I could maybe see...but a condom? What guy would want the face of bin Laden peering out from his manhood? And what woman would want to be on the receiving end of that?
  
  Anyway...back home in one piece, my sanity still essentially in tact...though I make no promises for next year.