Category: Personal

I don’t hit the malls on the day after Thanksgiving. After having put in a few years in retail during the hoilday season, any small amount of joy I might have taken in the hype, the sales, and the “official” start of the holiday season got ground out of me.

Plus, it’s really getting crazy out there in shopping-land. Last night, as we drove home from dinner, I saw a line of people already waiting outside the CompUSA in San Mateo. There’s something seriously wrong with you if you feel the need to stand outside in the cold all Thanksgiving night just so that you can buy some discounted electronics at a sale the next morning. What’s next, taking the whole family to stand on line all Thanksgiving day and eating your turkey in a pup tent in the parking lot, just so you can be first in line?

Pure insanity, as far as I am concerned.

However, I’m not a hardcore Buy Nothing Day person, either. I did venture out to Trader Joe’s to buy a gallon of milk and some crackers late this afternoon.

Sorry I’ve gone dark. Scott had a health issue come up and I’ve been focused on dealing with it more than anything else right now.

He’s going to need surgery, which will probably take place in December, but assuming all goes well with that he should recover completely.

So now I have something else to be thankful for tomorrow.

Actually, it wasnt all that strange., but the fact that I can actually remember any of it several hours after I woke is a little unusual.

The dream:

I was sitting in a Starbucks in a new town. Perhaps I was having a conversation with someone, or perhaps I had just finished the conversation. And then, I turned around and asked the barista behind the counter for a job application.

It doesn’t take a professional headshrinker to guess that I’m processing some anxiety about my upcoming graduation. I started the path to my MBA in the expectation that it would help me get back onto the career track I was jerked off of back in 2002. But expectations are one thing. Finally, the time is coming where I find out whether that was a good decision or not, and I’m scared.

Small wonder I’m dreaming about running back to the security of Starbucks, even if in the light of day, it’s obvious that doing so would be a massive waste of my tuition. You don’t need an MBA to pull shots and wash out the steamed milk pitchers.

OK, I now know what trinket I want as a graduation present.

Apple is now selling their iPod Nano RED Special Edition in an 8 GB version.

Mmmm. Shiny red nano-y goodness.

I took this shot Saturday night, shortly before 7:00PM.

Right now, it’s 5:26 PM and fully dark out.

This sucks.

I’ve been a little sinus-y and headache-y today, and am hoping that a cold is not on its way. Depite feeling draggy, Scott and I went out to do a couple of errands to complete the winterization of his bike today.

While we were out, we stopped by the local Tower Records, which was festooned with “going out of business” signs. CDs were all 25% off and DVDs 20% off — not the greatest of discounts, but what the heck. We walked out with 4 DVDs and 4 CDs. I probably would have bought more if it weren’t for the sticker shock. Last time I was buying CDs they were generally $16. Just about everything I looked at in the bins was $21.

Tower Records was a big part of my CD buying life before we moved to San Francisco. Living within walking distance of a branch will do that to you. Once we got to SF, I tended to do my buying via Amazon. And by and large that was just fine,. But the thing you lose by not going to a store to do your buying is the serendipity of discovery. Online stores try very hard to come up with good algorythms for “you may also be interested in…” sections on a web page, but it’s not the same by a long shot. Those things are good for reminding you to buy batteries and a travel charger after you pick out a piece of electronics, but not so good for the more random connections that result in your walking out with 3 Star Wars DVDs as well as a copy of “Good Night and Good Luck”.

With Tower going down for the count, there’s even less chance I’ll be doing much of that random browsing in the future. And that’s a shame.

Local music critic Jim Harrington has a similar response to Tower’s immanent demise.

I took some cold meds before I sat down to write this and they seem to be starting to kick in. With any luck I’ll be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the AM.