The warmth of Thanksgiving still surrounds me.

That's good because the wind chill here in the Nort'woods flirts with me as I flirt with hot bartenders. There's the old cliche a cold wind blows right through you. It doesn't. It slows down, even pauses, saps you of strength, soul and sympathy and then moves on voiding itself of those essentials until it hits the next victim.

My friends at the Steakhouse & Lodge invited me for Thanksgiving dinner, I think imagining me sitting in my plastic chair at home with a reheated Hungry Man special.

But I started off the day going in to work for a while, where I received sweet emails from complete strangers either welcoming me to the area or responding to some of my personal writing online.

There's something about unsolicited humanity that outweighs the more rare hateful emails from complete strangers. The jerks in the world have no problem sitting at the computers and sending out poison and they tend to think the more often they do it, the better. But when someone takes valuable time out of their day to send out love, it's far more meaningful.

I went to the Steakhouse, which moved hundreds of folks through a beautiful buffet.

I had a couple pre-dinner drinks and then dinner with my little family, a server and her family, the bar manager and his daughter and one of the owners.

One of my adopted family members brought me a sampler plate of three desserts, which initially to me screamed, "GOUT, GOUT, GOUT."

But wouldn't it be impolite to turn down such an offer? I think I recall that from the Bible: "Thou shall eat of the presented desserts and thou shall be happy."

It's cold outside here in the Northwoods but warmest it could be inside.

Peace and warmth unto all of you my brothers and sisters.