Welcome To The Holidays

They might just kill you...

So Thanksgiving has passed. I spent it with the family. We had a ton of food and I watched the parade. I always watch it with my Snoopy doll (we also watch the Charlie Brown special together). It was exciting to see the Lions beat Green Bay (first time in nine years). I guess you could say that Thanksgiving is the start of the holiday season, but then you have to remember all the holiday stuff that was out in retail in October. 

Black Friday wasn't that interesting. I remember when the stores opened at 4am and the rush to get in. Now there's hardly any point. Sure sales are there and I'll shop, but now it's just ridiculous that stores want to start Black Friday on Thursday. For one thing Friday is in the name. It also really cuts into family time, unless your idea of family time is seeing how many other Black Friday shoppers you can take out as a unit (ten points for taking out grandma). 

However, despite my distaste for the Black Friday hype, I realized how many people work on the sacred day of feasting on Turkey. I had to drop my significant other off at the train station on Thanksgiving and as soon as he jumped out of my car five minutes before departure, I realized that there were people running the transportation system to make sure everyone got home to stuff themselves silly. I thought to myself, is this a free ride home for them or are they working because they have to ( or have nothing better to do)? Several super markets were also open until the mid-afternoon. Was this also necessary. Couldn't people have remembered everything they needed the day before? Heck, my sister ran to one store twice before the dinner was in the oven.

Let also not forget about the people who work at the football games. It's freezing and they could be hearing a nice hot dinner by a crackling fire and they're out there making TV magic for the football fans. 

I am starting to think that it is a little hypocritical that people complain about workers not getting time off from major retailers for Black Friday, yet it is okay for people to catch a plain or train and watch a football game on an"American Holiday set aside for family." I think we also forget about the troops who can't be home or the news reporters letting us know what is happening in the world (or just how to cook a turkey). They also have to work on this holiday. I am not saying it is right what stores are doing, but all the hype on both sides (shoppers and angry ranters) sensationalizes the problem of greed in our country. 

I found it shocking to realize that there are a lot of people who work on Thanksgiving. It made me thankful to have a job that allowed me the time off to celebrate an odd American tradition that others find strange (I spent Thanksgiving in the UK once and they thought it was a celebration like the forth of July for us). In fact I'm thankful to have a job and a home to call my own. I am thankful to have friends and a wonderful significant other. Heck most of the time I'm thankful to just be alive and thinking and totally free to do as I please. 

I hope other people are thankful too. No matter what the future holds I am thankful for today and the day before. Now to see what the future holds.

If you enjoyed this post (or if it really pissed you off) please comment and share (either on the blog or on Facebook). Maybe I can make someone smile for a moment to two.

Welcome To Homecoming

Not the Silent Hill Version...

Before I start this more nostalgic post, I would like to state my current goal. I want to meet Ellen. That is my goal in life. I do not want to sit in the audience and watch her make her show. I want to physically meet her and say hi, maybe get a hug. She is just so cool. Now, on to the post…

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This weekend was homecoming at my alma mater. It was my first homecoming as alumni at my school. It was really weird. It was one of those times where everything was the same, but everything had changed. I do miss being a student sometimes, but I like being a grown up. It’s just more stressful now on my own. 

I got up really early Saturday morning and drove down to the school. I stopped and picked my sister up on the way so she could see some of her friends. It was great. I saw a lot of people I had spent a lot of time with at school. It was almost like I had not left at all, but I could not just go back to my room and sleep after the rugby game.

I went to the football game, for the first time in four years. We actually beat the school we were playing (we go more for the academics instead of the sports). It was so much fun. I spent so much time doing things I did not even notice I got wind burned until it was too late.  There was so much to do and not enough time to do it all. 

I got to see what the people who are now living in my lodge (house on campus) did to it. Some of us who lived there last year saw them going into it. They did a great job with the space. I wish we had thought of some of the stuff they had done. We traded stories about the lodge and how wonderful it was to live in it. They were going to have a Halloween party there, so we left pretty quickly. 

Last night I had dinner with a friend, who had graduated many years before, and her friends from school. They were wonderful to talk to and to hear about all of the changes that have been made to the school since they had been there. I hope that my friends can be like that when we get older. It might be hard, but I would still like to be in touch with most of them ten years down the road. It’s hard being away from them.

I discovered that a lot of my friends (well most of my friends) who had graduated had moved to northern Virginia and the DC area. I am not that far from them, but traffic here is just awful. Maybe I will take a few days off and just be in my favorite city. 

My college roommate and I spent the night at a Super 8 hotel (in the sketchy part of town). It was just like we were still roommates, except we had the TV on. She played her video game and I talked about random things. We have strange conversations, maybe one day you will see them in print. 

Homecoming was a lot of fun. The drive back was long, but worth it. It was hard to leave. I do not want to be the creepy old alum that hangs out and pretends to still be cool. I would rather still be 21 and trying to figure out what classes to take next semester. I wish time had stood still just a little longer. Oh well, I will just have to slow down the future and enjoy the present.