A very good friend of mine, Dave Jarrott, passed along an email recently, entitled "The Fourteen Things It Took Me Over 50 Years to Learn." Dave noted that it was an excerpt from the pen of another "Dave" - Dave Barry, who in my opinion, is one of the world's great writers - especially for those of us who don't take everything quite as seriously as others do.

Most of the "14 Things" Barry cites are classic, such as...

If you had to identify, in one word , the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings".

That one hit home, as did another of the 14 little gems: Barry says, "You should not confuse your career with your life." Well stated, Dave. Both Daves.

I won't pretend to speak for Jarrott, but I think he would agree: We've both spent most of our so-called "careers" in the radio business, or "the media" in general. And it took me a good part of that 50-year milestone to realize that, "Hey, O'C, there really IS something else out there."

I call the "something else out there" the little things. Hobbies play a role - I define a hobby as what we REALLY want to do in our "career", but it doesn't PAY! (And, as Dave Barry puts it, "There's a fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness".) Whatever we call them, I thank the Lord for those little things that so often go unnoticed. We can go to school to learn a new career. But neither school nor anything else can teach or retrieve the little things. This week, I'm especially thankful for them. All of them.

So, Happy Thanksgiving to all from "Ye Olde Fortnight Weekly" ... just one of those little things I'm truly thankful for. And, by gosh, it doesn't require a meeting!