Gratitude Yeti: I'm thankful that I wasn't all that plugged in over the Thanksgiving holiday to sit down and write a blog! While I did somewhat neurotically check my phone during the Ole Miss / Mississippi State game on Saturday night, for the most part, I hung out with friends and family down in Phoenix.

I'm thankful my parents, who recently moved from rural South Dakota to even more rural West Virginia, were able to make the trip and we got out into the desert for a couple of hours to poke around and talk to cacti. There's something about those huge saguaro cacti that make me feel like they each have individual personalities and if you stood there long enough, you'd eventually start to have a conversation. I said as much to my Dad and we got to talking about Snoopy's cousin Spike, and we both wondered if Spike had been in the war and moved out to the desert to just be in nature, because I get that. Peanuts is a very complex and deep cartoon sometimes.

I'm also pretty stoked its winter. I want to say I'm sad there's not more snow, but I'll focus instead on the fact that we've got snow and I plan on heading up to ski tonight in the Canyons. Which is awesome...because SKI rhymes with WHEE!