This post isn't specifically about food, but @mrsbozz and I had the chance to get together with @diamonddave and his wife for lunch the other day and of course you know I had to snap some pics!
With today being the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, I felt it was only right to take a little bit of time and reflect on the year so far. It's been a doozie for sure.
If I had to pick one low point, it would definitely be early April when @mrsbozz and I had to say goodbye to our dog @jovijett after 14 and a half years. It literally crushed us, but I am thankful for the time we had with her, and I am thankful for the fact that time does work magic on healing those wounds. The fact that I haven't broken down crying while typing this is a testament to that.
Over the 4th of July holiday, we got to take an amazing trip to Colorado to watch my niece play softball with her travel team. This was the most ambitious trip that @mrsbozz and I have ever embarked on. Spending three days (one way) driving across the US in a rental car together could be a recipe for disaster with some couples. I'm definitely thankful for @mrsbozz and the fact that I get to share experiences like this with her.
She's definitely a keeper!
Speaking of @mrsbozz... This was definitely a year of crossing things off our bucket list together. As you saw, we got to drive up into the Rocky Mountains together, and not once, but twice she got to see the Northern Lights this year. We were camping up in Onaway, MI in the middle of May when one of the biggest geo-storms in recent history hit the Earth's atmosphere and made the sky explode.
It was so amazing!
Actually, without campsite right on the shores of Black Lake, even if we hadn't seen the Aurora Borealis, it still would have been an amazing weekend.
Speaking of camping... Besides the May trip, and the drive out to Colorado (not a camping trip), we also got to explore some new areas of Michigan that we haven't seen before. I even got to ride on a boat underneath the Mackinac Bridge that connects Michigan's upper peninsula and lower peninsula.
I'm so thankful that @mrsbozz and I work at a place where we can afford both time-wise and monetarily to take regular camping trips like these ones.
The fact that we get to share it with our family and friends is just icing on the cake so to speak.
Sadly, @diamonddave didn't get to travel with us this summer due to some major medical issues he was going through. Which brings me back to our lunch the other day. As you saw from the opening photo, my wife got the adobo bowl with chicken.
I got the classic burger which though it looks good in the photo really wasn't the best burger I have ever had. If we go back to this place again, I will probably get something different. It was kind of dry and the bun was weird. I ended up only eating about 1/4 of the bun.
@diamonddave's wife got a burger they called the "crabby patty". Basically, it was a burger with crab meat cheese filling on top of it. She said that she wished the filling had more flavor, so I think it was kind of a miss for her as well.
@diamonddave got this 9" pizza that you see above, and I am happy to say that he ate nearly all of it. That's a stark contrast from where we were a year ago when he wasn't able to keep any food down. He rapidly dropped over 100 pounds and after finding that a large part of his small intestine had become unviable, it wasn't looking good.
I remember sitting in the hospital early in 2024 with @mrsbozz and his wife where she was wondering if it was time to pull the plug and take him off life support. Yeah, it was that bad.
Thankfully, she didn't, and modern medicine as well as faith is a miraculous thing. He still has a long road ahead of him, but he is once again thriving and hopefully by next summer he will be back on the road camping with us.
Meanwhile, @mrsbozz had her own health scare a month or so ago, but thankfully, it turned out to be nothing. I also have one more health related thing I am so thankful for. I can't really talk about it right now, but hopefully one day I will be able to share it with you!
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't reflect on my time here on Hive a little bit and make a point of saying how thankful I am for this platform. It has truly been an outlet for me and I hope that one day when I am long gone my blog will still be kicking around on the chain. If my family and friends have any doubt about how much they meant to me, I hope they can come back to these posts and be reminded of that fact.
I'm also thankful for my new Grilling and Smoking community here on Hive. It has gotten a great reception so far and I look forward to adding more content to it. I hope others do as well!
If you are celebrating the holiday this weekend, I hope you are able to sit back and take a little time to just appreciate everything we have to be thankful for. If things go the way a lot of people expect it to, 2025 could bring a lot of people multiple things to be thankful for (at least as far as crypto goes).