Wonderful Thanksgiving, Newspaper Ads, and Mad Friday
by Barry Bauer
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving! There was more food than we could have possibly eaten in a week and quite a variety. The turkey co-operated and turned out beautifully done and produced great gravy with a little help from me. I had a few additives I always include but I’m not going to say what they were. We ran out of cornstarch to thicken the gravy so we used a quick slurry of flour and water to finish the job.
We ended, up for a time, with one son-in-law asleep on the floor, apparently overcome by Tryptophan . . . again. Some of the grandkids went outside to play in our big backyard to get rid of some of that pent up energy.
We ended up playing Michigan Rummy in the evening with some of the grandkids joining in. I’m telling you, you have to watch those little card shark buggers. Who taught them how to play this game anyway! Because we play with pennies, nobody went home bankrupt because of the game but was simply entertained by it. That’s what we were hoping for.
I’m already looking forward to next year’s Thanksgiving.
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We get a Thanksgiving Day paper every year but I think this year’s paper outdid anything we’ve gotten in previous years because of the sheer bulk of ads in it. A funny thing to note is that our daily paper charges us an extra $1.50 just for the privilege of having them dump a ton of waste paper on us that we have to haul out in the garage to put in the recycle bin and then carry it out to the curb for pickup. They should pay us for getting rid of their trash
There’s something wrong with that, isn’t there? They get paid for putting those ads in the paper and I get charged to throw it out.
Thieves!
We do most of our shopping online and ads don’t really interest us anymore because we generally don’t physically go shopping anymore. I don’t think that matters to them.
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By now everybody is talking about Ndamukong Suh and the dumb thing he did during the Thanksgiving Day game in Detroit that got him ejected. I saw it and agree he was in the wrong. What we didn’t see is what happened before. What really bugs me is the guy who throws the first punch isn’t the one who’s ejected. In this case I wonder why Suh and the offense lineman for Green Bay ended up on the ground. I taped the game and I still haven’t seen it but in most cases if an offensive lineman takes a defensive lineman to the ground, he’s penalized for holding. Did anyone see the refs call that?
I didn’t.
The officials are watching Suh more than any other player because of his so called “dirty play” that has caught the league’s attention.
The punishment most suitable for Suh in today’s NFL is to make him wear a Tutu the rest of the season.
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I don’t care what the retailers called the day after Thanksgiving; I call it “Mad Friday.”
These people are nuts! Pepper spray was used, fights broke out, people went to the hospital, a shooting took place, and people camped out for days just to be the first one in line. Don’t they have a life? All of this doesn’t lead to a polite, friendly, festive or sane day of shopping.
The idea that the retailers feel they have to infringe on the Thanksgiving holiday shows that they’re either desperate, or don’t have a heart or a brain. They need to travel down the “Yellow Brick Road.” Maybe that’ll straighten them out.
At least that’s what I hope.
* * *
I’m just crazy about my cable company. Every time we turn around we lose another channel. Now Channel Six doesn’t have sound and Channel Three went off the air. That’s what I always dreamed of paying for, quiet TV channels.
Sure.
Unless we rent two more cable boxes, we can’t watch the Hallmark Channel on our other two TVs because they’ve moved it to a higher digital channel. We used to be able to watch Hallmark on all three TVs. They are trying to force us into renting more cable boxes.
Can everybody say, “Monopoly?”
There doesn’t seem to be a City of St. Johns watchdog overseeing the cable companies although there’s supposed to be, so they’re free to do whatever they want. I guess you’d call it “ripped off with approval.” I don’t know what else to call it.
It doesn’t seem right but it’s my choice whether to have cable or not and just like any show you don’t like, you turn it off or change the channel.
If it comes to a choice as to whether or not to have cable, they may very well lose a customer and soon. I’m tired of them ripping me off.
What local government can’t do for us, we have to do for ourselves. That’s the way it is folks.
Until the next time . . .