Happy Thanking!

I spent the day watching people.  It was quite delightful.  I passed people in the grocery store, busily getting things on their lists for the big Thanksgiving dinner.  One lady had written on her paper, "Thanking dinner."  I wasn't sure if she was shortening it or coining her own word.

I also ran into a father and a daughter closely examining cans in the vegetable aisle.
Daughter: [picks up can and hands it to her father]
Father: [takes it and looks at it.  Then he tells the truth to his daughter gently]  No, we should put that back.  I don't think you'll actually like it.

I look at the can: This little three old had picked up a can of butter bean succotash.  The picture on the can kind of looked like this:

The little girl gave her dad a look that seemed to say that she instinctively trusted his opinion but she really wasn't sure why he had turned her down.  

Meanwhile, the dad went back to studying the cans in front of him, trying to find the exact thing he was sent to go look for.  

And I laughed because I had never even heard of butter bean succotash before but it turns out - according to Wikipedia - that it is a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  

My brother-in-law's nephew and nephew's roommate spent a lot of time today playing soccer on the X-box.  Because I was interested in it, they even pulled up Wolfsburg and played a few games with that team so that I could see the Hasebe avatar run around a soccer field.  It was so exciting to cheer on not only mein lieblingsspieler but also mein lieblings-fussballmannschaft.  I almost felt like I was watching a game.