Thanksgiving Feast and Black Friday at Home Depot
More on pre-cat and post-cat wood coatings

Thanksgiving Feast and Black Friday at Home DepotThis is a very full week. But I suspect that before it’s over, today is going to seem like the calm before the storm. And speaking of storms, I am sitting in my office looking out on a rare sight this week. The rising sunlight is beautiful on those giant fir trees to my west. It has been raining buckets ever since Sunday and very dark. Tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day is supposed to be the nicest day of the week. But for now, the morning sun is beautiful.

As I said, my week is full. I got grocery shopping done for Thanksgiving around 10:00 p.m. Monday. Last night Carol and I did quite a bit of prep for that meal. And lest you miss where I’m going, all this chit-chat is not without reward. I am going to entice you with tomorrow’s creation by a woodworker…one of a different sort. Here’s tomorrow’s menu.

• Roast turkey with wild mushroom, leek, and filbert stuffing

• Mashed potatoes and gravy

• Green bean casserole

• Carol’s Killer Layered Jell-O salad

• Peas and pearl onions

• Crescent Rolls

• Cranberry sauce – jellied and whole

• A relish tray with assorted pickles and olives

• A white wine called White Crane by Confluence Vineyards of Vancouver, WA

• A red wine (Carol’s favorite) Shiraz by Australia’s Yellow Tail Wines

• Two kinds of homemade pumpkin pie with whipped cream

If you hurry, you can still get a spot at the table.

Then too, everybody knows that as soon as we get the dinner table cleared, Christmas is upon us. This year the news is that there are going to be more stores that intend to scoop the Black Friday events and will be conducting sales on Thanksgiving Day.

I must admit that my preference has always been that Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day as well as Easter Sunday are holy times. Our family has always set those days apart as high feast days. There are a lot of wonderful family memories that we have been made on those days in years past. Many of them have a food focus so the menu above is not at all unusual for one of our family gatherings.

This year, however, we find that we will have a quieter Thanksgiving. Our kids are grown up and off on their own. My daughter Erica is married and this will be little Clair’s second Thanksgiving. There’s more than one table for them to sit at. They spend the day table hopping. Eryn will probably be with them as Thanksgiving Break is observed from O.S.U. But I’m sure the annual “Civil War” will call Eryn back to Corvallis for Saturday’s game!

Carol’s kids are likewise involved. Her son, Brandon, will be in Seattle with his beau. Ashley will be with us. Her husband is working on an oil rig in the southwest somewhere. This year will be quiet but who knows who will show up or what will happen.

Speaking of Black Friday, this will be my first ever venture into that event. As I revealed last week, I am employed by The Home Depot so this will be my inauguration into retail sales during the holidays. For the first time that I can remember, I will be working on Friday.

This week we all worked to get the store ready for Friday morning. The store is bursting at the seams with piles of holiday items and specials for Friday. The main aisles of the store are filled with stack after stack of merchandise all covered up with…wait for it…black plastic. Promptly at 5:00 a.m. on Friday morning those wrappings come flying off and away we go! I suspect that the flier advertising all of those specials will be found in the paper this morning as well as on line and pulsing through the airwaves via the radio and TV. I suspect that there will be more pages of ads than of news for the next few days in our local paper.

Though this could be total pandemonium, I admit that I am looking forward to the experience. This is new and it could be fun. Ask me next year if it was and if I am looking forward to it again. Only time will tell!

To all of you, I wish you a wonderful holiday weekend. Whether you spend it tucked away somewhere quiet surrounded by family and turkey with all the trimmings or in the midst of the chaos of Black Friday weekend, I wish you peace, happiness, and a full tummy.

I give thanks for the sun shining on the fir trees outside my window. I give thanks for family and friends. I give thanks for your support and for reading this blog week after week. I hope you have things to be thankful for as well. Take time, first and foremost, to reflect on what you have to give thanks for!

Until next time…spray on!

 

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