Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

I am really sad to be in Japan and without a real kitchen today. Last Thanksgiving Rose and I prepared a truly awesome feast with home-made delicacies of every sort. This year I ate ramen. Which is also good, but significantly less traditional.

It's my family's tradition to force everyone to say what they are thankful for in the previous year before anyone is allowed to eat. As a child, of course, I found this mildly embarrassing and figured it was just another expression of grown-ups' need to inflict emotional harm on their children by forcing them to wait for things (as with being forced to wait until after breakfast to open Christmas presents, another time-honored Johnson family torture technique). As I've gotten older, though, I've come to appreciate the exercise of taking a moment to reflect on all that for which we are grateful.

I am thankful this year, as in every year, that I have found the world this year as well to be full of beautiful people with big hearts in which they have made space for me. I give the greatest thanks, though, for the beautiful woman waiting for me to return to Düsseldorf. We've been together five years, and she knows me as well as it is possible for one person to know another, and she married me anyway.

Enjoy your turkey, everybody.