I'm thankful I didn't burn the turkey

For the second time ever, I cooked Thanksgiving dinner entirely by myself. Now I have a background in cooking; I have been a line cook at 3 different restaurants and a background with pastry.

But cooking a turkey is very new to me. I cooked one once before and something just did not go right. I could not put my finger on it, but it wasn't that good.

This year, I managed to get it right. I stuffed my turkey with sweet onions, sage, parsley and savory. I cooked it at 325 degrees for 3 1/2 hours. My husband said it was amazing and my dog got her own plate.

It was a very nice, low key Thanksgiving.

Michigan weather still gets to me

I've lived in Michigan almost my entire life. I was born here. But I still cannot get used to how quickly the weather can change.

My husband generally works weekends but he was given this weekend off. We decided to take our dog to Gallup Park, since she has never been. We went on Saturday, and the weather was 60 degrees.

We brought her tennis ball, which seems to be her current favorite and we discovered she enjoyed leaping up in the air for the ball but she couldn't seem to catch it. She would let it fall and then just go about her business sniffing around. She is a hound so this is a common occurrence.

She had so much fun on Saturday we decided to take her again on Sunday. Well, between Saturday and Sunday the temperature had somehow dropped 30 degrees. 30 degrees! In one day!

I took two videos, one on Saturday and one on Sunday, and it's still shocking to me the difference between the two. On Saturday, the sun was out and the park was full of people. On Sunday, it was cloudy, overcast and freezing. But we had seen how much our dog enjoyed the park so we decided to go again.

She didn't mind the cold. I was freezing.