First, a note to any of our friends abroad: last week was Thanksgiving. Cliff had long-ago committed to a conference in France and was still working on the paper to present, so we stayed close to home and had a very, very quiet Thanksgiving dinner.

The day after Thanksgiving here has developed into a shopping frenzy that was dubbed "Black Friday." [We're not sure why--even the mighty Wikipedia is a little murky on its origins, but the smart money is on the theory that poor souls who worked in retail created the name, because really, who here wouldn't want to get to work by 4:45 a.m. the day after a major family-oriented holiday and face New-Years-Eve-in-Times-Square-style crowds, all cranky because they had to show up at 4:45 a.m., only to stand in line for an hour in an overheated store in their winter coats?] Retail stores throw open their doors early, offering insanely low prices on a few select items in very limited quantities, and the bleary-eyed shoppers line up before dawn in hopes of catching the elusive bargains. Best Buy actually promised to have an employee outside the store at 4 a.m. to hand out numbered tickets to customers waiting patiently for the store to open at 5. We didn't test that out ourselves, what with our not being, you know, masochists. What's kind of funny is the fact that the stores get so jam-packed with customers after the super-cheap stuff, that I can't imagine that many people buy much of the regularly-priced stuff--it's impossible to take the time to actually look around, and the wall-to-wall press of bodies must also inhibit shopping--so the stores pay for extra staffing hours and sell stuff at below-cost, and I wonder if they make it up in sales at all. But it's become a tradition.

We've spent many Thanksgivings in the wilds of southern New Jersey, far, far away from the big stores. But this year we were going to be home, convenient to the heavy hitters. So my husband actually created an Excel spreadsheet listing the stores and the items we might be interested in, to figure out which stores would be worth trying and which ones to pass on. Hee! Since there's no way we'd subject Hannah to this circus, Cliff volunteered to go out exploring around 6:30 a.m. (the slacker!). He first tried Circuit City, whose parking lot was completely full and overflowed into the neighboring two lots. After about 5 minutes actually in the store, he bailed. On to Home Depot and Office Max, which were reasonably sane. He bought a few things which we actually wanted and have already put into use. Then he braved Kohl's department store and, armed with my additional coupon for %15 off, purchased enough work trousers to last him the next 5 years at a scandalously low price, as well as some goodies for the rest of us.

Another UFO conquered!
In the wild-and-crazy world of knitting, a UFO is an UnFinished Object--you set something down, either because something else demands your time, or you hit a difficulty, or you just plain get sick of it. And the longer it lies there, ignored, the smaller the likelihood it will ever be completed. Well, while we were in Wales, Cliff picked up at the thrift shop (charity shop) a couple of balls of mysterious purple and gold wool, all for about 1£ (that's about 2 bucks, guys). I decided to knit a bag.... to carry my knitting about in. Since it was self-contained and only one piece, I carried it everywhere--to the park, the theatre, and of course Wednesday's Stitch-n-Bitch--and it was done in a couple of weeks. I dubbed it my Monster Bag. Once done, it needed to be lined with fabric. But, knowing that my trusty sewing machine and ginormous stash of fabric were waiting for me back in the States, I put off lining it until this fall, where it had to wait in line behind several other projects. But the bag, she is done! Photos in the gallery.