Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities

Chili dogs, TweetDeck top my list

I have much to be thankful for today, including a family full of colorful characters, dogs that like to play ball and a cat that doesn’t scratch (me anyway).

My house has central heat and air, my car has cruise control and I won the lottery last week ($3).

I also have a job that doesn’t require I wear a tie, carry post-hole diggers in the back of a truck or maintain anything that might blow up.

A few more things for which I’m thankful:

• Chili dogs from Foxy Drive-In, breakfast burritos from Twin Cronnie Drive-In and Dr Pepper with extra ice from Sonic.

• TweetDeck. Daren Estrada, a computer geek I used to know, recommended the software that helps organize my Twitter account into groups of followers ranging from “Best friends” to “Siwwy wabbitts” to “People I don’t even know.”

• Lens wipes. Daren also introduced me to these non-scratching, non-streaking, anti-fog cloths you can use to clean first your spectacles and then your computer monitor. Daren borrowed 373 of my lens wipes after he hooked me. I think he moved to Florida so he wouldn’t have to pay me back.

• Facebook. Oh, the information available on this social networking site. Cortney Graham claims she saw stray dogs jumping like gymnasts on a trampoline. John Brooks warned his cardiologist that when fudge is outlawed, “only outlaws will have fudge.” Patti Dobson likes to go for runs dragging her dog on a sled. I could stay here all day.

• Hayley, Steve and so many others for trying to find answers to questions we don’t even understand. (They know what I mean.)

• Steve Kersh and Shelly Sites for always sending their weather reports on time, always responding to e-mails and (almost) always warning us when it’s going to snow or blow. Who woulda thought TV people could be so useful?

• My snowman collection. I have 18 of them now. My favorite looks like Burl Ives when he was narrator in “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

• My “Little Drummer Boy” song collection. I have 24 of them now. My favorite is by Whitney Houston and daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown. I am a poor boy too, pa rum pa pum pum.

• eBay. Where else can a fellow find a 1941 Muleshoe High School yearbook and a 1938 Clovis High School yearbook, for less than 15 bucks? How could anybody let these treasures end up in a cyber garage sale?

• Childhood memories of throwing rocks through an open gym window with Audie Beimer; skipping lunch in favor of one-on-one basketball with Leroy Rojas; and playing backyard softball with my cousins, where we only had room for two bases and anything hit over the fence was an out.

• Alvin Petty and all the other preachers I know whose actions remind us that what we do is at least as important as what we believe.

• I inspired d s the noble newshound in the church pew underworld of amos the mouse, according to creator Gary Mitchell. If you don’t think that’s cool then you’re probably not familiar with freddie the flea or louie the songdog either and you really need to read the paper more.

• Jimmy Stewart movies, tunafish patties, cold milk, grape juice, Tom T. Hall songs, Alison Krauss songs, baseball cards, Sue Grafton’s alphabet mysteries and XM Satellite Radio, where channel 175 has baseball 24-7 — even on Thanksgiving Day.

What a great life.

 
 
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