A lot of people are posting on Facebook something to be thankful for each day during the month of November, e.g., “Day 1 – I’m thankful for x.” “Day 2 – I’m thankful for y.” You get the idea. It’s probably one of the few good things to appear on Facebook in a long time. But since I’m on a bit of a Facebook exile, I haven’t been doing the day 1, day 2 thankful thing.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not thankful, and thankful for more than just letters like “x” and “y.” I’m thankful for all 26 letters of our alphabet, and for many other things. Just because I’m not posting every day doesn’t mean I’m not well aware of the many good things in my life. So to make it easier (on me), I’ll just post a month’s worth of Thanksgiving posts right here, right now, in no particular order (although they are still numbered because that’s what you do with lists)…

1. The Lovely Miss Courtney Miller (the daughter). She also sometimes answers to the name “Gerald,” but only to me;

2. A pretty good extended family;

3. Peninsula Heritage School. A darn fun place to work;

4.  Ukuleles in general, and Kala Ukuleles in particular;

5.  Acoustic guitars in general, and Martin Guitars in particular;

6.  This one shirt I have, not sure of the color, but sort of tan/gray-ish, Oxford-style button down, which has been washed just enough times to finally be right; 

7. Uganda;

8. Loving One by One Ministries

9.  Life Covenant Church

10. The fact that I can grow a pretty decent beard in a relatively short time;

11.  Good Stuff Restaurant in Hermosa Beach, CA;

12.  The State of Oregon – I’ve never been there, but I think it has a cool name and I’m planning to make every effort to go when I get around to it;

13.  Tall Americano’s from Starbucks

14.  Nairobi Java House

15.  The Yamaha P85 Digital Piano

16.  Yamaha keyboards in general

17.  Most of my private music students, especially the ones who A) can read a calendar, and B) can write a check, and C) can combine both of those skills on a regular monthly basis;

18.  The green chair in my living room;

19.  Amazon.com

20.  Apple (the company, not the fruit, although I have no personal issue with the fruit);

21.  Jesus (don’t get bent because of the #21 position – I said the list is in no particular order. I can already feel some of my readers getting worked up about this, so just relax);

22.  The Foghorn Swing Band in Long Beach, CA;

23. A handful of old friends I found on Facebook in the past few years, especially one of them;

24. Kit Kat Bars;

25. McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, CA;

26. Living in an area with good weather, about 3 miles from an actual ocean (although the traffic sucks most of the time, no getting around it);

27.  The new Windows from Microsoft (HA!!!  Just kidding – I’m a Mac guy. I just saw that commercial and thought I’d list it);

28.  Cayenne Pepper, because it’s done a good job of keeping one of the neighborhood dogs from doing gross thing in my yard lately; 

29.  Opportunities to know and play with really good musicians, and even lesser musicians, because playing music is pretty stinkin’ fun no matter who you’re playing with;

30.  All those old people in Uganda who still think I’m an optometrist.

Happy Thanksgiving!