The great American holiday

Oh, yeah. Thanksgiving break was beautiful. I get teary just thinking about it.

For starters, there was no formal Thanksgiving anything. John and I slept in, stayed home, watched TV, picked up around the apartment, and had turkey burgers for dinner. Magnificent. And yes, we were definitely grateful. Besides, the low-key Thanksgiving was a necessary component of the big picture, and the big picture was all about Black Friday.

We had initially foreseen ourselves out in the trenches in the early morning, armed with brass knuckles and nunchucks, battling it out with the otherwise unabated throng of rabid shoppers late into the evening for the best sweater at the bargain table of the nearest H&M. Suprisingly, this wasn't so much the case at most of the places we went, but we did have a tiny taste of the ugly. Our day was spent at Union Square, and we didn't get as early a start as we initially planned to, but once we were out there we grabbed some lunch and got to the shopping. Again, most places were suprisingly calm... for Black Friday, that is. There was still a very reasonable crowd everywhere we went, so we weren't entirely disappointed. Then, as the evening progressed, we got to an Aldo store, where we saw a banner advertising their Thanksgiving weekend special... 50% off everything's already marked down tag. Oh, man... we were so there.

When we got inside, we could barely move through the mass of people there, men and women alike. Shoes were literally flying everywhere. Dozens of store emplyees were walking around with clipboards and notepads, taking people's shoe orders, just before running to the back of the store and hunting down the requested items. Mind you, one had to hope that the size was right or the shoe looked good when worn, or you'd have to go through the whole process all over again. Then, if you should have to sit down in order to try a shoe on, good luck... short of pushing a kid into a pile of shoe boxes, I could barely find but a corner of a seat to sort of prop myself against for balance. I'd found three pairs of shoes for unnatural prices, and I was willing to undergo some minimal tortures to walk out of there with at least one pair to brag about later. Meanwhile, John was going through the same nightmare on the men's side of the store with three selections of his own. I did witness a fight between two women looking at the same pair of shoes, one overhearing that they were the last pair and waiting for the other woman to try them on so she could pounce if they didn't fit. There was some yelling, rustling of shopping bags... frankly, I was too busy fighting my own battle to see how it ended.

When we finally left, John had one pair of shoes and I had two. From there, things were easy and relaxed... the weather was crisp but not unpleasantly cold, and the outdoor stores in the park at the square had plenty to offer. John, in fact, got an early anniversary present while we were there, which he seems pretty giddy about getting: a celtic torque necklace. You gotta love it when someone's wanted something for years and years and not been able to get it, then all at once an opportunity presents itself and you jump at the chance, and presto, dream fulfilled. Besides, it was an instance when, despite the fact that it's not your common everyday kind of men's jewelry, the one we found not only fit well, but was also the sort he could actually pull off. Naturally, I had to get it for him. Besides loving him more than enough to justify the purchace, it also saved all the world from hearing him mutter to himself for weeks about having finally found it and wanting it more than anything ever in the whole wide world.

In short, it was a fantastic Thanksgiving, albeit somewhat unconventional. We didn't do big family stuff, but we both feel like we celebrated in style. Tie it up with going to the movies (the new Bond is a winner) and walking around in Lower Manhattan and South Street Seaport, and I'd say it made for a nice little package. Just a few weeks more, and the semester will be over and done with... for now, I maintain the opinion that three weeks have never been longer than the ones I'm begining at the moment.