With most high school athletics on a break until December, and the counting pretty much finished in the contentious midterm elections, it’s time to sit back, relax, and think about Thanksgiving next week.

Floyd County Circuit Court was light this week, with a plea deal on a woman ruled insane when she “borrowed” former Supervisor Lauren Yoder’s F-250 pickup truck in 2019 and drove it without permission to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina in what she told law enforcement authorities was an attempt to get away from the CIA, among other perceived threats.

Wish we could get away from the insanity in our nation’s government. At least an overwhelming number of voters turned away the hoard of “election deniers” in what most consider a strong rebuke of disgraced and corrupt former president Donald Trump.

Even the questionable Fox News is putting him on the back burner and Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post listed his “announcement” that he is running for a third chance at the presidency he lost in 2020 as not so much news. It placed the short and acerbic story about the kickoff with a headline at the bottom of Page One that read: “Florida Man Makes Announcement” which directed readers to go to Page 26.

The National Weather Service says the high-temperature today should not get higher than 36 degrees today before plunging back into the mid-20s overnight. Friday and Saturday should be a little warmer (the mid-40s), then back into the 30s Sunday before hitting the 50s next week but no rain or wintry mixes in the forecast (for now).

Rain, however, is forecast for Thanksgiving Day with a high of 47.

In Virginia, COVID-19 continues to add around 900-1,000 new cases a day but deaths usually remain at 20 or lower. Those with full vaccinations, with all the boosters, appear to remain those who avoid new infections.

At an age where most of us stood in line to get needed polio vaccine shots to avoid the rampant disease that put too many Americans in iron lungs until they died, I’ve had trouble understanding the “anti-vaccine” types who claim it is all a part of some purported but never proven government conspiracy.

Rabid conspiracy theories were too much a part of the midterm elections and are driven too much by social media lies. At best, such websites should be called “unsocial media.” It is sad that misinformation comes to us from church pulpits and right-wing extremists who pass on such crap to the public without an ounce of documentation or proof.

Each day, I drive on U.S. 221 about three miles northeast of Floyd by a gaudy house plastered with outright lies and senseless promotion of Trump and the “deplorable” who continue to support him and promote his lies.

As a career newspaperman and onetime political operative for the political party that he has gutted, disgraced, and decimated, I am saddened by the hypnotic hold he has on people who should know better. They should know better.

Enough of the soap box. My wife and I have quietly recognized the 10th anniversary of the night I laid my Harley-Davidson Super Glide down to try and avoid hitting a black steer on a dark night on U.S. 221 between Cave Spring and the bottom of Bent Mountain in Roanoke County. That accident put me in intensive care with TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), a massive compound fracture of my right leg that a surgeon thought might need amputation, a face scraped away by the pavement after the facemask broke, and a dislodged eye.

A young plastic surgeon, Dr. Barton Thomas, put my face back together, built a new socket for my eye, and, somehow, managed to hide most of the scars behind my eyebrows. Orthopedic Surgeon Dr. Anthony Coniglione rebuilt my leg with multiple braces, rods, and pines and saved it.

My TBI requires continued occupational therapy plus physical therapy for the injuries. The remaining pain is lessened by a mixture of Tramadol, arthritis formula Tylenol, and a few other prescriptions and over-the-counter meds. A history of broken bones has riddled my body with severe arthritis.

We head for Thanksgiving with thanks for what we have and hope to do in the coming months and years.