Happy Thanksgiving!!!

As many of you are stuck spending time with family you'd rather not spend time with, I am enjoying my Thanksgiving immensely. And it's not because I get along so much with my family. We are part of a tradition among friends we call "anti-family Thanksgiving". It's exactly what the name implies - a Thanksgiving with no family.

It started about 6 years ago. Medicine Man has a friend out of state. (I call her Pretty Woman.) She was complaining about having to spend the holiday with family she did not want to spend time with. He told her to ditch the family and come visit here. So she did. She and her family told their families to stuff it, they piled the four of them into the minivan, and drove 1000 miles to spend Turkey Day here in the great white north. Others in our circle of friends had to work various parts of Thanksgiving and couldn't travel for the holiday weekend, and thus began anti-family Thanksgiving. Since that one, the rest of us who live here get together every year. We keep trying to have Pretty Woman and family join us again, but it's a long trip for them, so they haven't made the trip again.

For anti family Thanksgiving, it is comprised of my family of three, Frodo's "sister" and her parents, and Aunt Jen. This year, we've added Medicine Man's sister (she's a friend of mine and Aunt Jen's, and she's cool, so she doesn't count as being banned as family) and her two teenage daughters who are very neat gals. We ate Wednesday this year since every single one of us was off work on Wednesday. I provided reasonably clean house space since my home is the only one that would fit that many people. Aunt Jen provided the cooking. She made her WONDERFUL grilled turkey. Yum yum yum! We all stuffed ourselves silly with food and drink yesterday. It was a wonderful day. I strongly recommend anti-family holidays. There is a lot less stress involved.

I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving, with family or without family.

Going on a stroll through the internets

So here I am, peacefully sipping my morning coffee, booting up the laptop. Up comes my homepage. It is my homepage because my ISP put it there and I've never changed it. On the page today is a news story about the House of Representatives passing a war funding bill with a timeline for withdrawl included. We all know it's going to get vetoed, and then not have the necessary majority to override the veto. The Democrats said, "they wanted voters to know they weren't giving up." Whatever. From the beginning of the change of power, the Democrats rolled over like a dog waiting for it's belly scritch. No growling, no biting. This is more akin to a tail wagging saying, "See look! I'm still friendly!"

After being thoroughly depressed by thinking about the war and the lack of balls most anyone has in Congress (there are a few that still have balls. And teeth!), I backed up to the homepage again.

There I find my next reading: an article claiming Barack Obama broke the law by not putting his hand over his heart during a playing of the national anthem. Want to know what surprised me most in this article? A link that was provided showing that it IS a law that you are to place your hand over your heart during the anthem! Holy guacamole batman! So when I'm at a ballgame, about half the crowd should be ticketed..... I'm thinking holding a beer in your hand isn't the same as holding your hand over your heart. I love reading the history behind where things such as the national anthem and the pledge of allegiance came from.

Oh look! At the and of the Obama article! A link about the history of the Pledge of Allegiance! It's a good read. One thing I got out of it that was that as long ago as the Civil War, religious zealots were stating that the terrible things that happened to the United States, happened as "divine retribution" for not being a Christian nation. I did not realize this had been going on for 150 years.... I thought it was a newer phenomenon, that had only occurred once before during the McCarthy era in the supposed "fight against godless communism".

Next article this links me to is about the state of Georgia's new drought relief plan: prayer. If it works, you know the religious right will be all over it like a cheap suit. And if it doesn't? I'm sure it will be due to punishment for our godless ways. (can you see me rolling my eyes?)

I'm done strolling the internets for now. I think I'll go play one of my additcing web games.

There's something to be said...

...about having some curves!

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=3859175&page=1

A new study says women with a higher waist-to-hip ratio are more intelligent. Let's hear it for womanly curves!!!

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We had the always exciting (yawn) parent/teacher conference day yesterday. Fortunately, it's never been a conference where we are told about all the problems our child causes. But we also don't get the packet about the "gifted and talented" program either. I'm never quite sure if I should be pushing Frodo a bit harder or not. I was raised with VERY high expectations. A report card with six As and 1 B got me an interrogation about "why did you get a B in that class?" Ugh.

Oh wait. I think I just answered my own question.

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I understand some of you will hate me for this. But I have to say it because I'm so darned excited! I've actually started my christmas shopping already. I can't remember the last time I started shopping before Thanksgiving. I'm quite proud of myself. Of course, I've made a whopping THREE purchases is all. But hey! It's a start!

I had a surprise yesterday...

Along the mall theme yet-

Frodo, hubby and I were at the mall yesterday. It's after Halloween. And there wasn't any Christmas music playing yet! And even though they were starting to get decorations up, it wasn't all decked out already. I was pleasantly shocked and surprised! Maybe retailers really ARE starting to catch on!

Now, if I can just persuade them from using the phrase "lowest prices of the season!" ever again.....

Are there any answers to this?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21582725/

After reading that, I have a few lines of thought on the subject.

1) When I was a teenager (a couple decades ago), we occasionally hung out at the mall. I don't remember it being a problem then. We often walked around and chatted. Often we browsed. And even spent money! Nobody worried about curfew at the mall unless it was a weekday and you were supposed to be in school. (Like when I was in college and got carded by the mall security guard who thought I was skipping high school classes.)

2) Is this legal? Can they really ban certain groups of people from the mall? Can we take this another direction and start banning elderly people at certain times because they walk too slow? Or can we ban strollers at certain times because they block an expedient walking flow?

3) Telling them to stay out of the mall will just move them somewhere else. Next thing you know you'll have roving gangs of kids wandering the ailses of Target. Or Piggly Wiggly.

(Ok, this is starting to become more than "a few lines". Whups.)

4) And when crime starts going up in some neighborhoods, and the residents start hollering it's because of "these kids who have nothing to do", I wonder if they will blame the malls for kicking the kids out.

5) Whatever happened to good old fashioned respect? Why are there roving gangs of kids intimidating folks in the mall? Why do they have no sense of courtesy? (I know, that was more of a rhetorical question....)

6) And why lay a rule flat out banning ALL teens instead of just holding the poorly behaving ones accountable?

After all those thoughts, I will add - my hubby, being a cop, can legally carry a concealed weapon at anytime and almost anyplace. He normally doesn't. We live in a pretty decent city overall. However, when he goes to the mall, he carries. And as a family, we have some entertainment watching the gangs that occasionally hang out. It's fun to try and figure out what one common denominator they have such as they're all wearing something blue or they're all wearing items only on their left side. I think everything is just symptomatic of a larger problem: kids with no or very poor adult guidance. (Such as the mom and daughter duo recently busted around here for stealing a car to drive and get more drugs. Wooo Hoo!! What good parent/child bonding time!)

Then there's always the *nature vs nurture* argument to throw in here too.... I'll save that discussion for another time.

Proof that God isn't always on your side

I was pleased to find this news story this morning:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/31/funeral.protest/index.html

I'm all for First Amendment rights. This group has been to my town to "share" their "message". And I feel they have every right to be in a public space speaking their mind, even if I don't agree with what they are saying. But they completely crossed the line by attending funerals to protest. The church members' lawyers argued the funeral was a public event. I do not agree. And I'm so very glad the jury in this case agreed with my thoughts on this as well.

My only worry is that this might be the start of many lawsuits that could limit free speech.