Black Friday

A shopper's nightmare and a retailer's dream. You won't catch me near a store this weekend or probably through the whole Christmas season. My list isn't as large as it used to be and saving a few bucks by fighting traffic, trudging through stores and waiting hours in checkout lines lost its appeal for me since I got a computer. What little I need to do can mostly be accomplished online. It's worth a few extra bucks to avoid the stress.

That being said I did succumb to the sales today and bought myself a Christmas present. I am no longer probably the last blogger on earth without a digital camera. It's true folks. I ordered a Kodak Z760. I have no idea why I picked that model except the family convinced me that Kodak is an easy camera to use and it was good deal. One hopes I'll master it quickly and some day soon will be bombarding you with phlog posts.

I spent a lot of time this morning cruising around toy store sites for the tyke but didn't buy anything. I decided to wait and see what Mom and Dad buy for the little angel first so we don't duplicate. But it's fun to look at toys again. The rest of the kids in the family have long since reached an age when a cold cash is their favorite.

And speaking of Christmas - it's hard to avoid around here. Normally I wouldn't even start thinking about it for another week or so but the "oldies" station I listen to in the car has been playing all carols - all the time, for about a week and half now and of course the stores have had their displays up since before Halloween. Those are easy enough to tune out but I embarked on a newspaper search last night and ended up driving into the center of town to check the vending boxes. Not to a paper to be had but I saw an astonishing number of houses already decorated and lit up. My favorite still is the house that decorated for Halloween with all the lights. They took the pumpkins away but the house is still all lit up orange, clashing nicely with the next door neighbor's Santa display.

Oh and while I'm thinking of holidays. Tomorrow is Buy Nothing Day, a concept surprisingly supported by a bookstore in a nearby town. I heard a bit on CNN this morning saying if everyone really got back to the true spirit of Christmas and celebrated without the crass consumerism, the economy would grind to a halt. How sad to think our economy depends on greed and materialism.