fairly certain those lovely pumpkin pancakes i ate for breakfast contained ex-lax.

watching some commershals just now and both radio shack & old navy are stressing that they have sales saturday in addition to friday. heh. can't get enough people to get up at 4am for a wee bit of competitive consumerism? perhaps the retailers will be participating in a wee bit of competitive catering-to-the-customers for a change. don't make us work so hard to spend our money with you. you want our money? YOU work for it!

see - here's the thing: people are sick of fighting over bargains. we are simplifying our lives and cutting out a lot of the consumerism in favor of home made gifts or donations to charity or most simply of all - spending time together. plus - we realize that there will be deals later, closer to the actual solstice celebration day. the prices we are seeing today will likely reappear in a few weeks and might even go lower. but the bottom line is that a lot of people are just tired of fighting over the chance to spend money. there will always be another whatchamacallit or thingamajiggie. no one's child has died from not receiving The Perfect Gift Right On Time. we all get through the hype and inevitable disappointment of everything not being the correct stuff [no matter how hard we try to make it be].

we're a resilient lot. we generally come out the other side of the solstice celebration with a renewed faith in ourselves and in The Great & Powerful Oz. perhaps it is, specifically, our meager attempts at gift-giving - at matching things to people in the perfect way - that makes us realize the superiority of everything given to us by Oz.