Unbeatable Black Friday... while supplies last

This is a recycled post from last year when I was still a MySpace blogger.  I've always felt that Black Friday was in complete contrast to what Christmas is about; and what happened last year on Black Friday really pounds home the point...

It's Walmart's Fault the World Sucks!

       I guess by now, most everyone's heard about the WalMart worker that was trampled to death, while working the doors on Black Friday.  I don't know if it's been confirmed, but another witness said a young woman suffered a miscarriage in the crowd.  (later found to be untrue, but could have happened)  That was Walmart's fault, too.  And you've probably heard about the shooting in the Toys R Us store.  That was probably Toys R Us' fault.  

     In the Walmart event, the blame is for not having appropriate crowd control.  Are you kidding me?  So if I go shopping and they don't provide enough security, I can knock someone down, use them for a doormat and blame the store for my behavior?  And how can you possibly not feel someone's body under your feet?  Granted, the people at the front of the lines are probably not to blame.

      I was in a crowd like that once, when some soap opera stars visited a local mall.  It scared me to death!  I had put a friend's daughter up on my shoulders to protect her.  It was only seconds before we were surrounded by a shoving mass.  A guy next to me was pushing against me so hard, he was twisting the toddler's let against me making her cry.  I told him he was hurting her, to which he replied, "Hey Lady, we want to see too."  OMG!  What kind of animal responds that way?  There were mothers using their baby's strollers to push their way through for a better spot.  Yes, the babies were in the strollers!  Luckily my friend and I were able to slowly work our way backwards and sideways into a music store where we took shelter until the crowd dissipated.  We were terribly frightened!  I understood what it was like in that Cincinnati rock concert crowd.  It stunned me how civilized people could act that way!

      I haven't seen the footage showing the Walmart shoppers entering the store, but I'd bet the people in front had little control of their own movement.   When the first ones felt the body underfoot, they probably could do nothing about it.  We can't expect two or three decent people to be able to hold back a crowd of hundreds.  I can't imagine feeling a person being tramped by my own feet and not being able to stop and help them up and out of harm's way.  It would be a nightmare that haunted me forever!

     Personally, I've never participated in Black Friday shopping.  I've heard horror stories about how people grab things away from others.  Fights break out in toy departments.  The worst of human nature is put on display for the sake of profits.  Modesty aside, it is beneath me to act that way!  My own daughter came very close to being the only little girl in town without a Cabbage Patch doll for Christmas one year.  I wasn't about to fight for one!

     So who is to blame in the Walmart tragedy?  For starters, the people who did the pushing!  It's a shame we probably won't be able to isolate the individuals that started the chaos.  They should be brought up on charges of manslaughter at the very least!  So do I think the retailers are innocent?  Certainly not.  But not just because of insufficient security...  I don't think it's entirely a store's responsibility to control the conduct of the individuals shopping there.  (Don't we know it's wrong to shove people?  Do we need a large police officers' presence to prevent this?)  But the retailers do cause the chaos by turning Christmas shopping into a race... a competition to see who gets there first.

     Lots of stores advertise a much-wanted item at a ridiculously low price, only to offer just one or two items at the price.  Whoever is third in line is out of luck, unless they can shove their way to the front of the line!  When did this start?  Why did this start?  Why not just mark a reasonable percentage off for that entire day?  Or how about everyone that makes a qualifying purchase that day is entered into a drawing for the dirt-cheap deal?  After all, isn't it about getting shoppers out spending money in their stores?  Not about selling that one hot item at 4 am?

     I will continue my boycott of Black Friday, but it will have no effect.  There are too many people out there looking for that great deal.  Besides, I look forward to Thanksgiving.  I'm not about to cut it short so I can get to up at 2 am to go shopping!  Whatever it was that Walmart offered that morning, I hope the person that got it realizes it wasn't worth the price...

2008 Black Friday sale ad

Happy Thanksgiving!

May your stuffing  be tasty 

 

May your turkey be  plump, 

 

May your potatoes  and gravy

Have never a lump.  

May your yams be  delicious

And your pies take  the prize,

And may your  Thanksgiving dinner

Stay off your  thighs!

  76y/

 

 

Yummy for Your Tummy!

My good friend Anne at Comfort Food Warms Your Soul is having a Holiday Cookie Recipe Exchange. 

 I know you've all got your favorite holiday recipes, some handed down through generations.  Well, I guess you could say this is a three-generation hand-me-recipe.  My granddaughters love making these.  This is my favorite homemade cookie.  It's sweet, chewy, crispy, and super easy to make...  all the things that make a cookie good!

When my daughter was very young, I sent off a dollar plus some box tops (I think) to redeem for a Jello recipe book.  All the recipes call for a Jello gelatin or pudding product.  This recipe contains instant pudding and a cake mix, so all you calorie-conscious readers beware!

These cookies are great to include with edible gifts for Christmas, as they are green!  They look lovely paired with candy-cane cookies on a platter.  I'm sorry I don't have a photo of them, but I did upload the recipe as a jpg file!  So save it, try them, and let me know what you think.

Hello, Bydgoszcz!

I have an obsession...  Well, I have more than one, but I'm only going to talk about one for now...  My tracking widgets have turned me into an OC monster! 

Well, maybe not THAT kind of monster.  More like this...

I have the same tracking widgets on all three blogs.  My visitor counter from pax.com keeps a running total of visits to my blog.  I don't know why I have it there.  I'm convinced it's not accurate, and I rarely look at it. I use the ClustrMaps widget to keep a record of all the countries that have visited my blogs.  I seldom check it either, but I like it anyway.  But honestly, the widget that I blame for my obsessive/compulsive behavior is the MapLoco widget at the bottom of the page...

This widget tracks the cities that have visited my blogs.  It's not accurate either.  I live in Xenia.  I have had visitors from Xenia show up on it.  But I show up as Dayton.  I don't know exactly how it decides what city to register.  I've also had visitors (I can tell by the comments they leave) that don't show up at all!  Not that it's really critical anyway; I just like to see all the cities around the world that pass by my blog.  It truly amazes me that someone in Bahrain read my blog!  I'm not sure I could find Bahrain on a map if it wasn't for Google!

The thing about this widget that really makes me OC...  It doesn't keep the data!  That's right...  read 'em while they're there!  It updates every twenty-four hours.  That means, if I should happen to get a visitor from the space station or Mars, and I don't check it that day, I'll never know.  NEVER!

I wish I would have placed these widgets on my blog when I first started them.  Or, at least, would have started keeping track of the cities when I first got the widgets, but I didn't. until around mid-July.  I'm not sure really when I started, but it probably closely correlates with when the dust started accumulating on the furniture.    OK, maybe my priorities are a little out-of-whack.  (What exactly is whack?)

Soon, my curiosity took over...  How long would it take for all fifty states to visit my blogs?  The OCD kicked in...  I set up a spread sheet. (Not this one.)

 

Everyday I checked the widget and recorded any cities not already on my chart.  I'm very organized, so this was a quick task.  It was going to be a temporary thing.  It didn't take long to collect a list of cities from forty states.  I found it's kinda like dieting...  the closer you get to the goal, the harder it becomes.

Since I've been logging the data, I'm still waiting for visitors from Delaware, Wyoming,  Rhode Island, and both Dakotas.   Yet, I've had visitors from Argentina to Yugoslavia.  I've actually been visited by seventy-three different countries!  Isn't that amazing?  And I'm not even one of the 'popular' bloggers!   I thought about giving up on the tracking.  Maybe I'll never have a visitor from South Dakota.

I thought about stopping when I reached a thousand cities...  Now, that time is upon me. Yes, this afternoon I crossed that threshold.  Yesterday I had reached nine hundred ninety-six world cities.  Today I had these new cities visit me:  Bhopal, India; Selfoss, Iceland; Espoo, Finland; Trabuco Canyon, CA, USA; Bydgoszcz, Poland. 

Should I hang in there?  Will Delawareans get bored enough to travel to my blog?  It has been fun to share with my two oldest grandchildren (also part-time bloggers) the new countries that show up on my widget.  Although, honestly, I think they lost interest long ago.

Recycled Dust & Old Neighborhoods

We had some business in Dayton this week, so while we were in town, we decided to stop at the shop and load up on sawdust. 

We know some guys that have a pattern shop.  Their trash collectors do not allow them to put their sawdust in the trash, so we told them we could help them get rid of it...  We use it in our stalls.  You know how I love to recycle!

We have to make sure we know what kind of wood it came from.  Some wood shavings aren't safe to use with horses.  And sometimes it's too dusty, so I just spread it around outside.

Looks like the dust collectors blew up before we got there!  Normally, most of the sawdust goes into this collector system:

Those black trash bags on the left are filled with sawdust, as is the door under the big funnel-shaped thing.  We ended up with seven large garbage bags full of pine dust and shavings.  That will top off our bin and get us through the winter. 

We don't keep our horses inside much.  Maggie stays in at night unless it's really warm out., and we keep her in during heavy rains.  The other two only stay in if it's icy out.  They have a run-in shelter in the paddock.  They don't let Maggie in it.

After we left the shop, we decided to drop in on a friend I used to work with.  He lives one block over from my old house in the city.  No, I wasn't a country girl until six years ago!  I loved the city then.  Now, I can't imagine going back!

 I always loved the big trees that lined the street.

 Fourth house on the left. 

It wasn't much, but it was mine!  Built in 1907, it was a DIY dream.  I left it for the burbs in 1999.  Then, after tying the knot with Mr J, we bought some old farm land outside of Xenia.  The rest, as they say, is history...

Ghost Blogger

I came in the bedroom the other day and caught Mickey on my laptop...

  

 

 Seems she was working on a Thanksgiving Day post...