Thanksgiving Day

I woke at about 4 am and read from the Book of Mormon and the new Afghanistan-based novel I've started. I then got some exercise, using a weight set of my older brother, and then walking over to the new track at Heritage High School. The track surface is a new, rubberized surface. The location is the same as when I went to high school - - it encircles the practice football field. I spent a lot of time on the that field during my high school years, having played football all 4 years and having run track my junior year. I learned a lot of lessons there as well. One of the lessons came during a football practice before my senior season. I played fullback, and took a handoff right up the middle of a line. As I tried to accelerate through the line, my foot hit a patch of clay-like mud, my foot shot backward, I lost my balance, fell, and the play ended right there. I was anxious to compete for a starting spot, so every play counted, and I wanted the coach to realize the play was a fluke that did not reflect my abilities. I looked plaintiveley at Coach McCall as I headed back to the huddle, and he simply remarked "I can't do anything about the mud." For the remainder of the day, my Mom made a great Thanksgiving Day dinner, we watched the Denver Broncos beat the Dallas Cowboys, and watched "Napoleon Dynamite." This was my brother Doug's first viewing of the movie. Doug himself has noticed the physical resemblance between Doug and the Napoleon character, especially if you look back at Doug's high school pictures. Doug is a pretty exacting film critic, so looked forward to his assessment of this movie with some trepidation. In the end, he gave it a 7.5 or 8 on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being high).