For the past several days, gale force winds of pure evil have been sweeping down across the Greater Los Angeles area, knocking over powerlines and trees, fanning fires in the foothills and preventing me from getting a decent night's sleep. Every year at this time I am kept awake night after night by the winds that blow fiercely through the alley behind my apartment building, creating this irritating high pitched whistling sound. No matter what I do, sleep is next to impossible when this is happening. I have tried everything, from placing my pillow over my head, to wearing earplugs, to making animal sacrifices to attempt to appease the wind gods, but nothing works. So, I remain sleep deprived and can do nothing more but yearn for the spring, when these winds will cease.

As I'm sure you know, Thanksgiving is coming up this Thursday, and I couldn't be happier about it. Thanksgiving has long been one of my favorite holidays, largely due to the fact that I love turkey. Love to eat turkey. Turkey for the girls and turkey for the boys, my favorite kind of pants are corduroys. This year, once again, I'll be joining my sister-in-law's family on Balboa Island in Newport Beach. It's quite a nice place to spend the holiday, especially when her dad takes us all out on the boat before dinner. That's my favorite part.

In other news, tonight I was over at Shane Ross's and John's place in Pasadena, but Shane was out of town, so it was just John, Ryan, Travis, Truong and me. It was kind of low key, but that was fine with me. Sadly, there's not much to report this week. Everybody seems to be sort of in the holiday mode. This has always struck me as somewhat of an odd week, mostly because it's more or less three days long for almost everybody. I think, only once, have I ever had to work on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and that was only because it's illegal for any bank to be closed for more than three days in a row. Of course, as you know, I don't have to work this Friday either.