Clicking Thanks

Thanksgiving is a reminder for all of us to be thankful for the blessings in our lives. Really, I suppose we should be doing that every day, but we’re all human and we get caught up in the routine of daily life. It’s not worth beating ourselves up over—this is why we have a whole day called Thanksgiving! We use this opportunity to do our token bit of appreciation for whatever it is we appreciate.

For example, I am grateful for the 26 turkeys that gave their lives so that I could have a traditional Thanksgiving meal. I always enjoyed it.

But may that number never become 27! I’m just not interested in eating turkey anymore, so no more birdies should suffer on my account. Show me to the side dishes.

In fact, scratch that—just show me to the airplane. I’m spending Thanksgiving en route to Japan to visit my parents. Plans while there include dining at a Michelin-starred restaurant serving shojin ryori, or vegetarian Zen Buddhist cuisine. To say I’m excited would be an understatement. Fortunately for you (or at least the blog), no one in Japan looks twice at people taking pictures of their meals, so I hope to be posting some exquisite food photos here soon! Until then, I have a handful of fabulous guest posts lined up for next week.

In the meantime, as long as you’re online already and all, how’s about I round up some clickable ways of giving thanks? Click down the list and you’ll have done a seriously good deed or two with far less time and effort involved than go in to roasting a turkey.

• Operation Chocolate-Covered Kindness – Our own Katie’s blogroots endeavor to raise money for her favorite charities. Just visit her blog to generate a pageview towards her goal!
• Free Rice – Addiction alert! This is a fun word game you can play to end hunger. For each right answer, they’ll donate 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program.
• Click to donate a Free Mammogram at The Breast Cancer Site.
• Click to donate to The Animal Rescue Site.
• Click to protect the rainforest.
• Click to donate books towards increasing literacy.
• Click to donate towards free child healthcare.
• Click to donate to The Hunger Site.
• Or go really nuts and click here for approximately eleventy-bajillion other places where you can click-to-give for free.

In light of the list I just made, it would be ironic if I failed to thank YOU for clicking HERE. And by ‘here’ I just mean my blog, period. I feel lucky to be able to interact with a bunch of really cool people on the interwebs, and if nothing else, I just want to say, “Thank you for stroking my ego.” If I were a baby getting a check-up right now, I’m sure the good doctor would tell me my head was in the 92nd percentile.

If only my boobs would catch up.

Happy, happy Thanksgiving!