Thanksgiving

I had a decent Thanksgiving this year. I went to Kat's family's Thanksgiving, and it was pleasant to meet her family, even though I'd met one of her brothers before and think I may have met her mother once before as well. She has a pretty nice family, and it was nice hanging out with them for the day, eating some turkey, watching a dvd and then getting driven back home. For someone who really doesn't celebrate holidays anymore (mainly because I don't have a family with whom to share holidays), it was a friendly diversion.

I'm finding the whole backlash against Black Friday really interesting. There is way too much of an emphasis on buying things in this country, so seeing people respond negatively to this attitude is great to see. I was at Target earlier today to buy a sink tub for washing dishes, and there were way too many people looking for "deals" that weren't really there.

I read an advertisement for Circuit City yesterday for Black Friday that was advertising computer games for the exact price you'd pay if they weren't on sale, and they were hyping their non-sale prices as "sales". Flipping through that circular, I realized they weren't even trying to offer deals to people on Black Friday. They were just hoping people would show up after Thanksgiving and start spending money.

And that's the problem right there. Stores are appearing almost desperate in their attempts to attract people to their stores, while they are doing nothing to actually make it worthwhile for a customer to come to their store. Having balloons and a guy dressed as Santa doesn't attract people to want to spend money they wouldn't normally spend anyway. It seems that more and more parents are becoming disgusted at the idea that Santa is at the mall to convince parents to buy products from the stores in the mall, when the original premise of Santa was that SANTA was going to bring the stuff to the kids, not mommy and daddy. In America's middle class, the desire tends to point towards cutting out the middle man. Santa, unfortunately, has become the middle man, as his only purpose is to ask the kids what they want so that mom and dad can buy such products. So, why have the kids ask some homeless guy who has a job for the winter period to get them what they want for Christmas when the parents can ask the kids themselves, saving themselves from a painful trip to a shopping mall with overpriced products and food and impossible to find parking? Using a cost-benefit analysis, it would probably be beneficial to tell your children early in life that there is no Santa Claus, and that any Christmas presents are coming from mom and/or dad.

I attended my last counseling session today. She wasn't very helpful. She was hot and attractive, which almost made it worth it to keep seeing her, but I got the impression she didn't have any more insight about my own problems than I did. So I told her I wouldn't be scheduling any more sessions; it wasn't leading anywhere positive.

Next week I start training for the Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) program. It will probably be 10 weeks or so before I actually start working with the children themselves, but that's fine. I figured it was time to use my talents for something beneficial; I haven't really had much chance to use them for anything in my own pursuits recently.

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