Friday, November 28, 2008

Black Friday

It's the day after Thanksgiving and the biggest shopping day of the year. The malls are opening at 4am! WTF? This is ridiculous. The poor store clerks who make god awful wages and now they have to open the doors to those nuts who have given in to the hype and sales incentives that keep the insanity going. I will admit that I am going to Joann's later this morning to take advantage of their 50% off notions and the great deals on craft supplies, but hey, I'm a Girl Scout leader and I have a craft fair next week. But I will not spend hours at the malls.

Nicole wants to spend hours at the mall. She got her grade money (yes I pay the kids for good grades - it started out with Aaron as an incentive but backfired with Nicole as she is the straight A student!) I will be texting her later this morning to remind her that the spirit of the season is about giving and wouldn't it be a great day to buy gifts, especially something for her mom!

Today is also the day I struggle with if it is time for the Christmas Tree and decorations to go up. When we had a real tree we never put it or outside lights up until a week before Christmas. Now that we have artificial, we can decorate early. I have more time this weekend to do this as next weekend I have a craft fair and Rob is hunting all weekend. Then it's suddenly 2 weeks before Christmas and things get frenzied.

The thing about the Christmas Tree going up now is that I get to spend a month getting the cats out of the tree, not just out from under the tree but out of the tree. Yeah, yeah, they are a year older but Charlie was just as much an offender at this tree terrorizing as the younger two, so I'm nervous. Cleo has put on weight and I can see the branches not holding up under her weight. Fig will climb to test if we are paying enough attention to him and Charlie will lie in wait under the tree to only leap out at unsuspecting individuals walking by.

I love the drama and fun of the holiday season though and the smells of baking when I make my 60 loaves of pumpkin bread to give away. I guess I better get that tree up today, time, she is a wasting!

7 comments:

  1. Black Friday is EVIL!! Esp. this year- shootings and a poor guy getting pummeled to death! So stupid.
    Yummmmmm.... Pumpkin bread.

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  2. I cant help but to point out that you're supporting the whole concept of 4am shopping (which you're calling ridiculous) by adding yourself to the immense list of customers queuing for cheap products.
    Really, either you find the concept and its methods ridiculous and choose not to support it, or you find it reasonable and choose to support it. Wtf is up with calling it "ridiculous" and then ending up standing in line with very same people you claim to have "given in to the hype and sales incentives that keep going" - what makes them any different from you, or gives you reason to believe that they think any different of you than you think of them? In theory and within your frame of thought, the people who give in to the ridiculousness of the situation, hence are the individuals ho "have given in to the hype and sales incentives that keep going" might very well be people such as, yes, YOU!

    Take a look at your surroundings; Nicole, whoever she is (your daughter i guess?) is going to the mall, effectively providing an incentive for the "poor store clerk" to be sent to work on what might have been his day off" yet your blogpost reflects no concerns about this - even though you choose to concern yourself with the conditions of the "poor store clerk". In other words, you preach for A, yet you go for B. Not only that, but you actually preach for A, then go on telling the entire church that you're really going for B. This you can never rationalize. Your actions must reflect your ideology, else your ideology is non-existant.
    Take a stand, choose a belief and hold onto it - whatever it is.
    Pacifism is the worst crime of them all.

    Ps. I apologize for grammar mistakes, typos etc. - i am not native english.

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  3. Good points, thanks for responding. I hope you come back.

    Although what I find ridiculous is that every year they move the store opening hours to the wee hours of the morning. This just puts everyone in a bad mood as they haven't had enough sleep after their turkey induced coma. This causes tempers to flare and then stampedes as the stores open.

    I'm all for finding a bargain and I do shop the sales but I'm not going to get up early, drive bleary eyed to the mall and them push my way in so I can get that $200 flat screen TV that I don't need.

    Where I did go was to the craft store so I could find bargains as my Girl Scout troop has very little money and I want to stretch those dollars as far as I can.

    My beef on Black Friday is that the big guys in charge set the store opening times to create a false frenzy that only does good for the stores bottom line, they are not concerned for their employees or their customers.

    You call me a pacifist but I've been called worse. I think in the future I will try to keep my blog posts to less controversial topics.

    So no more posts about religion, politics and shopping. I think I'll stick with cats and bodily functions.

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  4. Fuck anonymous...must be nice to be perfect and politically correct all the time.Talk about cowardice! Doesn't even have the balls or ovaries to state a name or alias for that matter! Don't let one bad apple spoil the whole bunch girl, dear sister...keep on with what your doing. I guess one has to expect things like this is one has their "Dear Diary" on a public forum-unfortunately. If this person read everything correctly, you weren't there at 4am anyway! Poor sod must work retail...

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  5. I figured out anonymous is from Copenhagen. Damn scandinavians!

    He spent 55 minutes browsing my blog too!

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  6. So weird! It's really cold here and dark here, so I guess there's nothing better to do than browse blogs and be cranky! Maybe I could write something in Norwegian?! Maybe he or she got here via the key words "can't cope with defeat"..hee hee!

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  7. And one more thing and I promise I'll stop...this Dane called you essentially a pacifist. I think he/she meant hypocrite! Not that that is better..pacifism by definition has absolutely nothing to do with what Kongen af Danmark was accusing you of. Pacifism means to oppose war or viølence or to bear arms on moral or religious grounds. And it also means having an attitude or policy of non-resistence. So maybe the last definition fits?! You couldn't resist going out shopping?!? hee hee. My work is done here...

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