Again?

We had ten couples at Joe's dance tonight, so two squares. Some people must have been home preparing for Thanksgiving. We still had an interesting dance and lots of laughter and fun. Joe said that unfortunately his wife Chris is not feeling well, so he's looking forward to fixing her soup for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.

After the dance tonight, we stopped at the HEB near Tropic Star to pick up some final items for Thanksgiving dinner. About halfway through the store, in the midst of noisy crowds and half-empty shelves, I remembered that we had stopped at this same store last year the night before Thanksgiving, only to find that some of the items we were looking for were sold out... I hope now I've learned my lesson and won't procrastinate again next year!

Then we came home and started our own preparations, chopping onions and celery and cubing bread for the stuffing. We cleaned out the roaster and got the turkey ready to be stuffed in the morning. While we worked we watched the news and then the rest of a Frontline special on the life of Lee Harvey Oswald. I think it's the last of the JFK documentaries we had recorded.

Part of what I came away with is a sense that the assassination might so easily not have happened. Oswald might not have gotten the job at the school book depository if someone hadn't mentioned they were hiring. He might have spent the day looking for an apartment if his wife Marina had agreed to move back in with him. Life seems to turn on such minor, chance circumstances that it fairly begs us to engage in counterfactual thinking. "If only Oswald had ..., Kennedy would have lived." But all the counterfactual thinking in the world can't change what happened.

Chris called today. Parent teacher conferences at Anara's school happened this week. Anara's pre-calculus teacher was very positive about her "special abilities" in math, saying that it's impossible to challenge Anara without discouraging the rest of the class and suggesting that she could easily earn a doctorate in mathematics. We're hoping that Anara will stay motivated and interested in math as she moves to higher level classes in her junior and senior years.