Hello there, my friends. Today's discussion is about what makes you happy. Football makes me happy. I love the game. Nothing else gets my heart racing like an exciting football game. It grabs me by my endorphins and shakes me. I don't know if it's the up and down of emotions, the agony of a bad play, replaced by the exultation of a great play?The companionship of fellow football fans rooting for our team to win? The excitement of the battle between two worthy opponents? Whatever. Football makes me happy, most of the time. This year, my favorite team has been decimated by injuries that have effectively taken a lot of the fun out of it. I can bitch and moan about the losses in free agency. The lack of what some consider poor choices in the acquisition of talent for our team. The coaches. The front office. The owner. Bitch, bitch, bitch. The bottom line is that what we all hoped for, for this season has been decimated by injuries. Something we can't really control.

So what's next? The BRB mantra is "Waiting for next year since 2002". Do we have to wallow in sorrow for the next 10 months? I say no. No, dammit (tm). Let's discuss other options for happiness. It's two weeks until thanksgiving. Let's all collectively start counting our blessings. I'll start.

I love dogs. At this time, I have one. Her name is Honey. She's named after my grandmother on my fathers side because she was the sweetest woman to ever walk the earth. Honey is just like that. Well, unless you are a squirrel. She makes me smile every day. She's so smart that sometimes I forget that she's a dog. I know everything that she communicates to me as well as any person that can verbalized. When we got her, I told myself that I wouldn't get overly attatched to her due the pain I suffered from losing the dog we had prior to her. That lasted about ten minutes. She's momma's girl though. She's joined at the hip with my wife. To me, that makes her even more special.

That brings me to my wife. Mrs. Trutxfan is the most amazing and interesting person that I have ever met. I love her so much that it hurts. We've been married for 31 years and I actually have stronger feelings for her now than I did 31 years ago. She's amazingly beautiful, smart, kind, tough, and stubborn. For those of you that don't know, she's disabled. Before we moved to Kerrville, she ran a large national chain bookstore in Houston. Things were going great for us. We were both making good money and having a lot of success in our careers. Our grown daughter was out of the house and we were enjoying our lives. Then one day I get a call saying my wife is having an episode at work. When I got there, she said she felt like she was falling down an endless hole. The trip to the emergency room led to the discovery of a brain aneurysm. That week she had the surgery to repair it. I was a basket case. The surgery was a success. I took her home on a Saturday. At three am on Sunday morning she had a stroke. I didn't know what had happened at the time. I just remember throwing her in the car and racing her to the emergency room. We are both lucky to be alive with how I drove. I remember barely being able to see with the tears in my eyes. This was the worst day of my life. The doctors told me that she was stable but critical and the next few hours would determine if she would make it. She pulled through. It was rough for a while. She suffered from memory problems and blind spots in her vision. Her speech returned to normal after a few months and her mobility all came back after about six months of therapy. I ended up quitting my job to stay home to take care of her. The worst was that the stroke somehow caused her rheumatoid levels to explode. She now suffers from this debilitating condition that basically makes every day a fight against constant pain. We decided to "retire". We moved to Kerrville and bought a ranch. We sold everything we had and made the plunge. My wife has always had a thing about horses. As a kid and young adult, she learned how to train cutting horses. We started doing that on the ranch. We bought some cattle to go along with the horses as a way to have something to work the horses with. I found out that I had some talent in that area. Along with raising some Pygmy goats, we started to make some money. All of this was due to my wife. We had the ranch for about thirteen years and sold it a little over a year ago because my wife's arthritis got to the point that she couldn't work with the horses any more, and the heartbreak of not being able to do it made the choice to sell obvious. She's my best friend. She's my lover. She's my mentor. When I get all worked up about something, she's the one that brings me back to the center. Even with her disabilities, she's capable of any task. I couldn't be luckier or more thankful for my luck at convincing this amazing woman to share my life with me. She's my happy place.

While there are many more things that I could add to this list of " My Happy Place", I'll end it with where we live. We live in Kerrville Texas. It's a semi-small town about sixty miles west of San Antonio on I10. The population signs say there are about 23,000 people here. There's actually a more, but whatever. It sits in the heart of the Texas hill country in a valley surrounded by hills with the Guadalupe river running through the middle of it. I can't even describe the qualities that make this place so special. My dad says that God lays his hand very gentle here. He's a retired minister, so I guess he knows something about that. Whatever it is though, it's real. Your heart rate goes down when you pull off the highway. The wildflowers in the spring take your breath away. The clear air fills your lungs. The live oaks and the cedar provide green all year long. The people are honest and strait forward. One of the things that always amazes me is that you can be standing in line at HEB with a construction worker or a billionaire and strike up a casual conversation with no pretense. No one really cares. We now live on a modest place. After selling the ranch, I thought I would feel cramped on a smaller place. No more jumping on a four wheeler and riding around. Our place is 12 acres. For some people, that might sound like a lot, but after living on a place over 450 acres, it's not very big. The thing is, it's perfect. We have a nice creek that runs through the back of the property that's filled with oak and pecan trees. Our "yard" is about six acres that keeps me busy. The new house is perfect. After all the years of moving from house to house, my wife and I were able to put together all the things we liked about our other houses and combined them into our perfect home. We have very good friends that live close. Our daughter lives close by with her husband and our granddaughter and her husband (I know, I know, let's just say we started early and leave it at that) also live close by. Actually most of both of our families live within a two hour range from here. We couldn't be happier. Life is good and everyone is doing well. My Happy place. Kerrville, Texas.

What makes you happy BRB? In this time of thanksgiving, can you look past the silliness of the world and come up with something that brings joy in your life? Life is short. It can be sweet or it can be horrible. I've experienced both sides. I choose to be thankful instead of regretful. Please tell me about your happy place.

God bless America, BRB, and all of my brothers and sisters.