Earlier in the day, we decorated gingerbread houses. The night before we went to see the Christmas windows in midtown, but forgot the camera. Naomi really enjoyed seeing them this year. :)
So Happy Thanksgiving! This Thanksgiving weekend actually did not get off to a super start. I was not so grateful. For one thing I was mad because Matt had to work some (even though I was also working some...whatever, I was just not in the best of moods). And I have been feeling a little down on Manhattan lately. Sometimes I love it, but sometimes I hate it. The main thing I don't like is the thick, dusty air with its toxic aroma that wafts up from 2nd avenue and the cement plant (or so we think) across the street from our apartment. I miss clean air. The light, fresh air of Utah after a storm has blown through and obliterated the winter inversion...or the air at a ski resort, cold but unadulterated. Air that smells like grass and trees, or freshly-fallen snow instead of exhaust fumes, smoke, paint fumes, alcohol, trash, vomit, and cement. I want it, I crave it.
But it is there in some places. After a couple months of not feeling up to a regular running routine, I've been running at least three times a week the past few weeks, and it turns out that while not all parts of Central Park smell wonderful....the air around the Central Park Reservoir cannot be argued with. It is beautiful, as is the sky--almost especially on those gray, wet days when the rest of NYC looks a little more like a combination of wet-scraggly dog and a slop of cement. And I am grateful for those places in NY, those views and nooks that really manage to transcend all the industrialism and noise for the sake of a quiet that is all the more beautiful because of its scarcity. They provide necessary escapes that make it possible to appreciate the rest of IT ALL. And I do appreciate the rest of it all. I just need an escape now and then, a piece of better air, a piece of larger sky. A bit of balance.
Anyway. There are many things to potentially express gratitude for...but since I have now used up my alotted time for posting to our blog, I will simply mention one: THIS BOOK. I love the Pathophysiology of Heart Disease. Not necessarily because I have a thing for cardiology. But I have to admit, there is something very beautiful about the human heart and its complete and utter logicality. I thought this semester that I would be a little more enamored with the brain (and I was at first), but the heart is a good little machine also, just about as elegant as the writing in this STELLAR TEXTBOOK (which I am not going to have time to finish reading, as usual). That and the back of the eye. I cannot get over how beautiful a healthy fundus is, when visualized through dilated pupils. SO AMAZING!
Back to the books....
