Thanksgiving Day 2006. This Thanksgiving Day will be unlike any of the Thanksgiving Days of the past. This will be the first Thanksgiving that I will not spend with at least some of my brothers and sisters. I come from a family of nine, so you would think that would not be the case. On a side note, this will be my first Thanksgiving as Kimberly. I have no idea if the later has any bearing on the former. To be fair, I could have dined with my younger sister and her quests. However, at least one of her guest is a vegetarian and does not eat meat. Except for fish; somehow, fish is considered non-animal and is OK to eat. Maybe you veggie people out there can enlighten me on this concept. Therefore, my sister had planned a completely different menu for Thanksgiving than what I would have been enjoying. I came close to accepting the invitation until it was mentioned that I would probably eat at the breakfast table alone. This is Thanksgiving and I don’t want to eat alone in separate room from the others.

To say I was a bit sad over this year’s Thanksgiving is to be expected. I placed a lot of importance on family; I always have and have looked forward for many years to having a family of my own someday. For my brothers and sisters to know that I would be alone on Thanksgiving Day and not really seem to care hurts. Maybe I need to rethink the importance of family.

Before retiring to bed last night, I did a check of my email. In my in-box was an email from my sister-in-law who has recently separated from my brother. I guess she knew that I had been abandon by my family and wanted to let me know that I am welcomed to join her and her new partner for Thanksgiving. That was really sweet of her to invite me. My own blood, my brother, is having Thanksgiving out of town and here his ex is inviting me to her house for Thanksgiving. Maybe I need to rethink the importance of family. My sister-in-law is not related to me outside of the marriage to my brother; she is not a blood relative and yet she was concerned that I would be alone for Thanksgiving.

I will not be spending Thanksgiving alone, even if I can not be with any of my immediate family. I talked with my Aunt last night who is having a big Thanksgiving Day celebration with her daughter and many grandchildren and a few great-grandchildren. She invited me to join them. A lot of my cousins have not met me as Kimberly. I have no idea how I will be received. However, if they want me to leave, at least I can go to my ex sister-in-law’s place and have Thanksgiving with her. I will not be spending Thanksgiving alone.

It is a nasty night here in NC with wind and rain. Currently the temperature is around 36-F.

I wouldn't have ventured out this evening, but earlier in the day I went to place a job application with a company that will be expanding and hiring new people. Of course I applied as Kimberly. I thought about going as a guy, but when it came time to get ready, I got ready as I always do without even thinking about it. The only reason I would venture out as a guy is the employment issues. I need a job!

After I place my application, I thought I would do a little bit of shopping since I had driven 30+ miles to Greensboro. As it turned out, I didn't do any shopping at all. The rain and the traffic were horrible. The wet roads turned into mirrors and I got a double dose of headlamps with the glare from the road surface. I miss my exits twice and once I turned a junction too quickly and ended up jumping over the centre reservation. The jump wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been surrounded by a concrete kerbing. At that point, all I wanted to do was to go home. I think I may have also gone straight through a junction from a right turn only lane. You just couldn't see the road markings!

As soon as I could, I headed out of town. Since it was on the way, I stopped at a friend's house to show her a few things on the computer that she needed a bit of help. When I arrived she was out buying groceries, but her wife was home and we chatted a bit. A few minutes later, my friend arrived and invited me to stay for dinner, which I accepted. I had a nice visit with my friends, good conversation and good food. So even with the little mishaps and the wind and rain, it wasn't such a bad evening after all.

Hello and welcome to my new weblog home. As some of you may know, I have blogs hosted at some of the free blogging sites; 360, Blogger, MySpace, but the limitations of those sites eventually lead me to set up my own weblog hosted at my domain of secretcorners.net. I may visit and post to those free sites at times, but my main posts will be here at Secret Corners with feeds sent out to the free sites when possible. If you visit my main page, you will see two links, one labeled “Rants,” and the other “Blog.” I intend to break up my blogging into two sites, one that I will use to express my opinions on diverse topics and the other for general comments on my day to day life.

I am using b2evolution as the weblog engine and find that it is without doubt, one of the best open source weblog engines out there. I found it a lot easier to customise than Serendipity, which I previously used. I will be tweaking the layout as time permits and I welcome feedback on the site layout and ease of use. After all, if you can’t easily use my blog, then I know that you will not be reading what I write.

So, without further ado, let the blogging begin!