Tag: holiday

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Bracing for a Winter Storm

This week coming up is an exciting one for a lot of people. It is the week of Thanksgiving, when a lot of people made a big effort to gather with family and enjoy a big traditional meal together. But it is also the early weeks of winter, and it looks like we are bracing for a winter storm this week, which will probably affect a lot of travel plans. I worry about big holidays when so many people are on the highways. You know that some people are going to be in wrecks, some will break down, some will have major problems when they arrive – it can be so stressful and dangerous.

I hope all my friends who are heading “home” this week are super extra careful when driving and that they arrive safely. I hope that the family dramas are limited and you find a reason to be grateful for having people who love you and the chance to share a wonderful meal.

I plan on staying home and just cooking a small turkey breast. I already bought everything at the store yesterday and am ready to cook on Thursday morning while I watch the Macy’s parade. I love Thanksgiving for a lot of reasons, and wish I could get home but that’s just not practical this year. Maybe next year I can invite a lot of family to join me here in my home and I will cook for a crowd. That will be a nice change!

In the meantime, I got my grocery shopping done for keeping my pantry stocked and for cooking the traditional turkey meal. I also bought some extra baking supplies, so if we really do have bad weather this week, I can try some recipes out and spend some fun hours in the kitchen baking. There are a whole pile of new recipes sitting on the desk that my friends have been sharing on Facebook and Pinterest. This might be the right time for trying them out!

 

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Any Big Sales This Weekend?

Sorry to admit this, but the Columbus Day holiday has always seemed the oddest and least celebrated holiday of all the official holidays throughout the year. We all learned a little bit about Christopher Columbus and several other notable world explorers while in school. And there is some controversy about whether Columbus really discovered America or did he land on a Caribbean Island or even Mexico or Central America instead?

But for me and anyone else who works in retail, Columbus Day means one more holiday to have an excuse for a sale and it is the last holiday before the big Christmas rush. I think the Columbus Day holiday has lost some of its shine in modern years and people are no so much interested in any sales during October unless it means they can get an early start on their Christmas shopping.

Do you know of any sales going on this weekend that will be worth going to the mall to save money on something you really need? I can’t think of anything, and I’m not willing to start my Christmas shopping yet, either!

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August 1 Means School Starts

Today is the first day of school for the kids in the Metro area. A lot of other counties are either starting this week, too, or one day next week. I think it is crazy to start school in August, but this has been a long term effort to change our public schools into a year round schedule.

By starting in August, the schools build in a week of “Fall Break” in October, a two week “Holiday Break” and then a one week “Spring Break.” So the kids don’t really go for a longer school year, they just get more breaks.

Since I don’t have kids, it doesn’t matter much to me. I find is strange to go back to school before Labor Day, as that traditionally meant the end of summer where I grew up. But in the South, the warm weather lasts a lot longer and they have redefined the breaks away from Christian holidays to be more suited to teacher’s needing a break and professional development seminars.

School back in session just means longer drive time in the mornings, as the school buses mess up traffic. I absolutely HATE getting stuck behind a school bus on my way to work. I end up leaving for work 20 minutes earlier when school is in session just so I don’t have to deal with school buses. Getting to work early means less sleep for me and not enough time after I get to work to do anything personal, so I end up making coffee for the whole office and reading the newspaper for 15 minutes every morning. Personally, I would rather get that extra sleep and skip the newspaper, but I’m not willing to risk being late due to traffic. So it is what it is.

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Rainy Forecast for the Fourth

This year I was really looking forward to going downtown on the Fourth of July holiday, but now I don’t think I will be going. The weather forecast is for rain tonight and all day tomorrow and a rainy Fourth of July night – all the way into Friday night. Yuck.

Several municipalities are cancelling their fireworks shows based on the rainy forecast. Some are pushing them out to Labor Day holiday weekend, which is a long way off but a kind of nice idea to add to that holiday celebration. Around here Labor Day does not usually mean much other than some people get a day off from work and all the outdoor swimming pools close.

Closing the pools on the first weekend of September is stupid in the South. The weather here is usually warm enough to enjoy a swimming pool for another 4 – 6 weeks.  I can see that if they need lifeguards it might be hard to find teenagers and college students available for lifeguard jobs, but truth be known, school here starts August 1, so the teens and college kids are long gone before Labor Day.

Anyway, if it really does rain all day and night tomorrow, I will stay home and watch the fireworks on TV instead of heading downtown. The last time I went downtown for fireworks, we got caught in a violent thunderstorm halfway through the fireworks show and the asshole police would not let us leave the bridge to go to our cars. They forced us to stay out on the bridge over the Cumberland River and risk getting hit by lightning. I was never so mad and so scared we would be hit by lightning before in my life. I will never let the police force me to stand outside in a thunderstorm again. So any time there is a serious threat of rain involved with a downtown event, I refuse to go.

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Wearing Green and Drinking Beer

This weekend is all about Saint Patrick’s Day. Here in Nashville we love any holiday that gives us an excuse to drink beer, so this is a big deal for downtown bars and restaurants. On top of the holiday, we have the SEC basketball playoffs here this weekend, with a huge number of extra partiers to accommodate.

I heard some big numbers on the news about how the downtown bars and restaurants can only actually seat something 75,000 people on a weekend, but with the basketball game there are going to be more like 100,000 people looking for fun and refreshments on Friday and Saturday nights. With all these extra people, Nashville decided to have a big street party and rope off a few blocks downtown to allowing drinking on the street – a very rare thing for our proper southern city!

To be honest, I do not drink much beer. I tend to not want the hassle of watching my intake and fretting about driving home without the risk of trouble with cops. And second, I don’t want all the extra calories. Third, I only like beer that is ice cold. I don’t want to hold a bottle in my hand and just sip on it for an hour with the heat from my hand raising the temperature of the beer. I don’t like drinking from a bottle anyway. I like a glass – and not plastic, I mean a real glass.

Sorry if I sound so finicky, but I have learned what I like and what I don’t like and I will certainly seek out the things that I like if I have that option. Maybe once in a while I might be at the boss’s house for a backyard barbecue and have to drink a beer from a red Solo cup, but most of the time I will be seated in a sports bar or a stadium suite and enjoy an ice cold beer served in a glass along with the peanuts or Chex Mix and a good baseball game or hockey game underway.

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Not Many Trick or Treaters at my House

This year we did not have many Trick or Treaters at my house. That was disappointing to me. I love holidays and was looking forward to handing out candy to lots of little kids. There are not many kids in my neighborhood, I guess.

I bought three bags of mixed candies and put them in a bowl by the door. When the kids rang my doorbell I offered them the bowl to take whatever they wanted. I think that is more fun for the kids than the adult rationing out just one or two pieces and not letting the kids choose what they like.

The doorbell only rang 6 times and altogether I think it was maybe 20 kids came to the door. All of the groups had at least one adult with them, which was good. Only one of the kids looked to be older – he might have been a parent or just an older brother escorting the little kids. He was wearing a mask so I couldn’t tell how old he might have been.

By eight o’clock they were all gone. I hope the kids who did get out had a good time. I wish there had been more.

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Pumpkin Patch Hunting

Today I went to the local Pumpkin Patch and hunting the most perfectly round big pumpkin I could find. I had a large one last year that was taller than it was round and it carved really nice. But I wanted something different this year.

The pumpkin patch had the pumpkins grouped by size. The really big ones were $40! Wow! I couldn’t believe that people are willing to spend $40 on a pumpkin that they don’t even eat – they just carve it and set it outside to decorate their porch.

The one I decided to buy was beautiful and I only paid $25. I think I could have found one cheaper, but this is a charity sale for the church youth group. I figured that since Halloween is supposed to be a holiday for the kids anyway, that supporting a youth group with my money was the right thing to do.

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Merry Christmas

merryxmas

This Christmas, I hope you and your family and friends are able to gather around and enjoy each other. The Christmas gifts and cooking the big meals are nice, but the holiday is really all about being with the people in your life who matter the most.

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Hot Dogs for a Fast Meal

I wanted to buy a pack of hot dogs for this weekend. We will be busy shopping and putting up the Christmas tree and I don’t want to have to cook anything special. I have enough on my hands with a holiday decorating and gift buying list.

I thought that hot dogs, mac and cheese and then some baked beans would be a nice, quick dinner. For some reason there are a bunch of different brands of hot dogs at the grocery store and now there are regular lengths, bun lengths, turkey hot dogs, beef hot dogs and regular mixed mystery meats hot dogs.

I had a hard time deciding, but ended up getting Oscar Mayer bun length hot dogs for almost $4 a pack of 8 hot dogs. The hot dog buns were only a dollar, the mac and cheese is only $2.50 and the baked beans were $.89 – so that was a cheap and fast meal for about two bucks per person.