Monday, November 30, 2009

Search and Recovery in Progress

What's missing in this picture is the knife that belonged in the empty slot as circled. This is sorta an all points bulletin that if you've found a misplaced knife in the past....where did you find it? I might find it in the same place. Thereof the set of knives won't remain incomplete. Again, I don't necessarily purchase kitchenware based on price alone. Although higher prices usually denote better quality material used in a given article's manufacture, there's also feel and asethetics that factor in and of the final product. Hey, I bought the "Tools of the Trade" knife set on sale several years ago already and I haven't had any regrets about the purchase.  However, I would prefer the knife set to remain complete. I'll eventually pass it on to my sister as an heirloom item and as overwhelmed as she'd be as the recepient of, the knife set should have all parts intact. It's just the idea.

So I decided to give the knife block a bath. So I put the knife block in the oven to thoroughly dry it out. Did you know that they make knife blocks out of wood? And did you know that if you set the oven temperature just a few degrees to hot, the wood block, or more accurately, the sub blocks will start to separate from one another leaving behind a gapping crack at its seams? No, you can't reverse the process. It simply don't work that way. That said, I'm leaving it in situ. That means, as it is. That way it'll fit in and blend well with my all stainless kitchen. Household items such as these aquire themselves sentimental value with each new nick and scratch endeared to them throughout their years of service. 

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Freezer II

This photo is a tribute to all the people who are freezing their okoles (buns) in large parts of the US and around the world during the winter season all snuggled together in their winter wonderland. Other than that, I absolutely don't want to have anything to do with cold weather. No snow angels. No frosty the snowman. No igloos. No fishing on a frozen lake. To me, and perhaps, it's only with me, but joining a polar bear club means eating a cone of shaved ice. If you remember only one thing from all the words I've blogged on this website, it should be...."I hate cold weather with a passion." Any temperature that dips into the lower 60's is simply just too cold for me.


Btw, I used 2-teaspoons of sugar with my morning coffee. I sliced the bacon for breakfast in halves instead of the usual quarters. Slow news day obviously. I was beginning to feel like main stream media. Then out of nowhere, the Tiger Woods story breaks. Is Tiger entitled to his privacy mitigated by the fact Tiger has always lived an off the golf course life as a very private individual? Obviously, when you're making $2 million a week from sponser endorsements ($100 million per year), things are not gonna be as simple as they should be. Makes me wonder if there's such a thing as "image insurance," as there's "legs insurance" for models or "hands insurance" for surgeons. When an arguably jilted bitch starts swinging a golf club at you, I think it's highly excusable to run over a fire hydrant or two in a futile attempt to dig out of the driveway seeking sanctuary at the local 7-11 at 2AM in the morning. Where da prenuptial agreement.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Hersey Bars and Freezers


I just about forgot that I stored away the Hersey almond bar in the freezer earlier this afternoon. Until, that is, I happened to open the freezer at about 1 AM in the middle of the night. Happens to you too? We should start a club.



Old Photo.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Next Up

Unrelated thought....Do you think that Tiger Woods was going shopping at 2am in the morning when he hit the fire hydrant?

Yawns

I arrived at Macy's at Ala Moana shopping center at 5:10 this morning for Black Friday. Know what, the waffle maker that I had in mind was still on regular sale price instead of being marked down as a selected super sale item, so somebody at Macy's knew in advance that I was coming especially for the waffle maker. Must be. 10-minutes after Macy's opened their doors, and there's already a decent line behind every checkout counter. Obviously the shoppers are veterans at it. I seen two ladies who even brought along their personal fold-up hand trucks to lug away their prize. I wasn't about to shop til I drop, as the expression goes, because I never sleep at all last night. Insomnia, again. Much unlike the people who camped overnight in the parking lots. There might have been other things worth buying at the shopping center like a zhu zhu hamster, but I felt out of it. So, then, what's the second best way to start off the second day of a four day weekend? Why, of course, buy a frozen pizza and take it home and have a pizza breakfast. Perhaps with spam and eggs as toppings. Just kidding. Waffles? As things would have it, the two supermarkets that I stopped by on my way home wasn't to open until 6 o' clock, so scratch that, too.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Obviously

How's the Weather on Your Side of the Island?

Whereas, the weather never did clear up tonight, photo taken after 5pm. Whereas, the windshield wipers on my motorbike don't work....don't rightly have windshield wipers, that's just an expression....I wasn't able to ride anywhere tonight due to the fowl weather. We're expecting more of the same weather for turkey day, too. Thus it was that I had all night free to think off something coherent to post about, and maybe something even interesting, but how is it, that when you do have the time to post, you don't have the ideas, and when you don't have the time to post, there's all kind revolutionary and unique ideas hitting you from all angles to blog about, but alas by the time you arrive back home at the newsdesk, those same newsworthy ideas have vanished from memory as much as you try your outmost to retrieve them and hammer out your latest post du jour? Bye bye to that Pulitzer. Last night a compact florescent bulb went out in the ceiling track lighting in my kitchen. It's been a few years already that I switched over all of my household lights to compact florescent bulbs. However, I never tossed out the older incadescent light bulbs. Naturally, I replaced the dead compact florescent bulb in the kitchen with a regular bulb and things are so much brighter now. I surmise that compact florescent bulbs get dimmer with age. You won't notice the diminished level of lumens with the naked eye because it sorta happens very gradually. While incadescent light bulbs are more to the point. You flip the light switch and they make that sound and the room still remains dark. 

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Uncaptioned

One Paddle, Two Paddle


I look outside my lanai (balcony), and what in tarnation are these girl paddlers doing running up and down the Ala Wai sidewalk making all kind big noise?


They're cheering fellow paddlers on. Full crews usually consists of six paddlers instead of two paddlers. Just to make things interesting, they're racing with each other. As with all things ohana, everbody gets a turn to make the grade. Funny thing is that once the paddlers switch roles with the cheerleading squad, "pick in up....that's all you get, etc." Or you're the holiday turkey, LOL.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Honolulu mayor wants to fine those who abuse bulky-item pickup rules, $500

"....bulky rubbish strewn on city sidewalks is the No. 1 complaint coming into the city."

Waikiki has a bulky-item pickup scheduled every Saturday. However, for most other neighborhoods, the city picks up bulky items only once a month. So our neighborhood doesn't have as similar a problem steming from residents piling their bulky items out too early, and the pile ending up strewn all over the place, since only a week will elapse until the next bulky-item pickup. I'm aware of a few people who have scavanged the mattresses they now have in their bedrooms from a bulky-item stockpile that they happened to pass by on their way home. In a few situations, people have taken home tv's only to find that the freebie tv just doesn't work, and perhaps that's the very reason the former owner of the tv, dumped the tv to begin with. Imbeciles. Originally, "bulky items" meant refrigerators and appliances, furniture, etc., too large to dispose off in rubbish bins. And landlords are not suppose to, for their own convience, dump out worldly belongings onto the street curb that were abandoned by a tenent who vacated an apartment. But people put out pots and pans, clothes, paperback books, old socks, etc., usually in cardboard boxes or garbage bags, and soon enough, pro scavengers making the rounds swoop in and ramsack the pile and leave a mess after they're done rumaging through the lot. It would be just too much to ask the Hawaii chapter of scavengers to instruct their membership to tidy up after themselves. In a sense, it sorta reminds me of the kind people that you find in grocery stores or department stores, who mess up the meat section or a neat stack of clothes.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Terrorists' Trials

On Sunday


If you're hungry then obviously or argueably you dropped by the right blog. The ®Souper Meal, word play on 'Super,' was on sale for 99¢ at Long's Drugs (CVS). A few minutes later I stopped by Times Supermarket across from Zippy's on King St. to buy a head of head cabbage. That's to use with the can of corn beef that I also bought at Long's. Now, on to world news....when I went pay for the head cabbage at Times, that's all I bought, every single checkout counter had a line. 'After,' I finished paying, all the lines simultaneously disappeared. Did you ever watch the Highlander tv series? Duncan MacLeod the Immortal? They termed this type of phenomenon a "gathering." How I miss Duncan MacLeod, and Buffy, too.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Kodak Moment


Back again at Ala Moana beach park. Which as you know can only mean....? Hint: just 2-blocks away from Office Depot. Another hint: Office Depot has the Canon Power Shot SX20 IS camera on sale that I mentioned in a previous post for $360, normally $400, and today was the final day of the sale.


So thus it was....I went buy the camera. I did do a price comparison search online but I wasn't able to find anything cheaper on the Internet, or as cheap, after you tacked on shipping and handling charges. What I did find though, was more "other" cameras, for example, a water-proof, shock-proof, freeze-proof Pentax digital compact, etc., that held the power to activate a human being's impulse buying nerve, and I immediately realized that I might end up selling the family cow for a beanstalk, if I kept on browsing, instead of taking the nearest exit ramp to Office Depot and purchasing the PowerShot SX20, if that makes any dollars and sense. Meaning that I might have bought two cameras instead of just one out of an overwhelming sense of urgency. After all money doesn't grow in greenhouses. Something there. Moving on, the above photo was not taken with the brand new camera, itself, that is, of an empty box that the new camera was in. I still haven't opened the box yet. It was taken with my older camera. My older camera took fine photos within the limitations of it's 6x optical/4x digital focal range. Any distance beyond that, however, and it's resolution became grainy. Another feature that's nice to have with the new PowerShot SX20 is it's ability to zoom while shooting in video mode which isn't always so with digital compact models.


Example of a photo taken with old camera from a distance of 100-120 feet. I'll bust out the new camera for anything beyond that range.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Per Pound

From Out of the Gas Oven


Extra thin crust pizza with 4-cheese toppings. Thinner than a saltine cracker.


I bought the frozen pizza at Safeway late last night. While I was there, I "thought" I saw frozen Manor House (Safeway house brand) turkeys on sale for $9 for 16-pounders or more, $4 for turkeys under 16-lbs, and Honeysuckle brand frozen turkeys for $8 each. They were all sold out at that hour. But that's still inexpensive and a bargain for a whole turkey.  Another thing, you know that laser guns that store employees use to scan bar codes to take inventory of food items on store shelves. Well, a Safeway worker was busy aiming the the laser gun's beam through the glass door of the frozen food section and registering the bar codes of each individual stack of food items without having to open the door. I didn't know they could do that.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

On Photos


Here's the camera that I mentioned in a previous post that I was thinking about buying. It sports a 20x optical zoom with a 4x digital zoom for a combined 80x telescopic-ation (whatever). Do not walk around naked in your apartment with your draps drawn wide open while I'm passing by. That's meant purely as a joke btw. At any rate, this level of camera is billed as a "pro-sumer" model, a play on an amateur "consumer." That is, above enthusiasts, but truthfully well below the accourtements of professional shutterbugs. I need the higher power zoom than what's on my camera to take better photos of subjects a hundred yards away, for example, surfers and kite-surfers out in the ocean, but I didn't want an expensive camera with a 2-foot long lens to tug around in my bike's saddlebags for fear that it'll sustain damage from all the bouncing around.

The Cannon SX20 is aound $400, with a $40 discount at Office Depot this week. I can deal with that and it's size is a large as I would want. It seems like not too long ago the average blogger didn't post pics on a daily basis, and when they did, their prize pictures had all the hallmarks of a novice, with the exception of Photo-of-the-Day bloggers. But nowadays a post that's not accompanied by a personalized photo has apparently become the exception, with blog-size photos rivaling the professional photographer's. All in all, I'm just staying on par with the peloton. Oh, btw, if I see just one more cat photo posted on an owner's blog. Lastly, I still regard text as sinew and photos as stage props. I might not be able to understand what I wrote the night before, but still.



**For taking those stealth photos of the inpromtu kind in  grocery and department stores.**

Wild Horses


Iron Horse in the stable for the night safe from the snow.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Macy's Big Wednesday Sale


A windy day for sure at Magic Island at Ala Moana beach park. I rode across the street to the beach after I finished browsing through Macy's "biggest sale of the year" at Ala Moana shopping center.


Still at Ala Moana beach. Should I buy that waffle maker that Macy's has on sale for a $100 (normally $150)? Just cannot seem to decide. As you can guess, big board room meeting going on upstairs. You see, if I were to buy the waffle maker, then I might very well have to hold off buying that new camera I had in mind. This might take all night. If you don't mind me asking, how is it with the members serving on your own board of directors?




Last night, I relocated the rear turn signals on Iron Horse from "A" to "B," and plugged the empty hole left at A with a round reflector. This allows me added room that's necessary for a larger set of saddlebags. Btw, I already bought larger saddlebags brand new, so that in itself doesn't factor in with the pending decision to buy the waffle maker on sale at Macy's. Yes, you really wanted to hear this.


There she is bolted to the license plate assembly. Next up....why, maintenance on Rudolf's red nose. 

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Monday, November 16, 2009

Where's My Gaff?

On most nights, the local tv newscasts does nothing for me. That's not for the lack of breaking local news stories, which is beyond the control of the newsrooms, nevertheless, in the absense of which, the local tv stations resort to national and world news filler material despite the fact that the national and world news follows the local news every evening and thereupon repeats the same story. There is the atmosphere so redolent of a plastic lei that premeates the local broadcasts. The faux localism that the newscasters exude would make a humuhumu nukunuku gag. That's our state fish, btw.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Michelle Wie Wins The Lorena Ochoa Invitational

....By now you've probably seen Michelle's shot out of the green-side bunker on the final hole of the tournament on some other sports highlight reel or another. She rolled her ball within a foot of the hole and tapped that in for the win. Continuing from where I left off below....while I was following the tournament on television, I also had the LPGA website on my computer screen. Namely the leaderboard page where scores are updated as they are played. When Michelle landed her approach shot into the bunker it was another uh-oh moment....would she blast her sand shot over the stands at the 18th-hole, incur a penalty, and take 6 more shots to finally sink it into the cup. While the tv broadcast was waiting for Michelle to walk up to the green I happened to glance at my computer screen only to find that the LPGA's website displaying that Michelle had already won the tournament. I was not the least bit amuzed to discover that the tv broadcast is a delayed broadcast, if only by a few minutes. At any rate, already knowing the outcome in advance actually spared me from turning off the game and missing out watching a historical moment, if you're been following Michelle Wie, that is. I have no inclination to follow Michelle's every game after this. That said, tv screen writers couldn't have scripted a better fictitious golf game why with Michelle's approach shot landing in the bunker with a probable "but, it was not to be" ending hanging in the balance. Then in the very next take, Michelle's ball rolling in a sweeping arc to within a foot of the hole. Btw, that was a Nike brand golf ball. How much does Nike pay Michelle....was it $5 million a year?



Here's how I saw it. There was Hawaii's most famous female athlete, Michelle Wie, tee-ing off on the final hole of the tournament holding a 1-stroke lead. Michelle's golf ball lands safely in the fairway. Big relief. Anything can happen with Michelle Wie, if you know what I mean. The 18th hole is a par-5 and she has 4 more strokes to get there....to arrive at her first win, if only finally. If Michelle was charged overdue fines she'd owe her fans trillions. On her second shot, Michelle plunks it into the green-side bunker aiming the ball for the green instead of protecting her lead and playing it safe. Michelle gulps, her trademark expression upon faultering. Michelle "Big Gulp" Wie. 2-hours I've been watching this golf tournament on television on a Sunday in the apartment only to have it all end like this. At her last week's LPGA tournament Michelle came in 2nd place and the stars seemed so aligned for Michelle's first win. Remember, the lady golfers take a few minutes to walk to their golf balls and you get to think about these things. (more later. Late, i going sleep)

Pizza Sunday

Four cheeze's. Thin crust. Safeway house brand....Yuck? Inexpensive. Even managed to inadvertently bbq the pizza to a crisp here and there. I didn't bother to scrap off the charred splotches. Just ate it all. We'll just have to wait and see how that works out on the digestive track later tonight. I photographed the large size pizza box on my Valkyrie's saddlebags just to show how large the touring saddlebags are. Bottom photo....shows that the entire pizza box fits into the saddlebags with room to spare. It wouldn't be the same case with my Shadow 600 (Iron Horse) which saddlebags are half the size. Wish I could always take my Valk out for groceries, but I ride it judiciously only on the best of weather. One hour riding, one hour polishing is the general rule. Today hadn't the most ideal weather however I thought an exception was in order before the snow storms hit Hawaii. (more later)

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Rain Delayed


da storm that they've been predicting has arrived in Waikiki, albeit, 2-days later than scheduled. We'll have to wait and see if it decides to hang out in the neighborhood. Have you ever noticed that weathermen on television won't bother to retract or even acknowledge inaccurate forecasts they've made the day before? Based on all available data. Lick your finger and stick into the wind. We were supposedly under storm alert. Make that a disclaimer alert. Every year, the top weathermen and weatherwomen in the nation receive a Golden Umbrella. LOL, made that up. Btw, lately due to some irritating spam on my comment page, I've enabled the word verification (captcha) feature.


On some days, it's a team sport like no other.

A Happy Saturday to You




Here, have some fries with that....

Friday, November 13, 2009

Just Who is Stella?

the following excerpts are on loan from Odds and Ends where you'll find more on the same topic.

Case 1:

Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The store owners were understandably surprised by the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own son.

Case 2:

Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles, Calif., won $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor's hubcaps.

Today, 650 state workers to lose jobs to help Hawaii close budget deficit


**whoops, only 84 state workers will be axed today. More accurately, the mass firings "starts" today. The newspaper that I took the story from even deleted their own error. Which you know led to my error.**

....which only means that people planning to move to the islands should buy round-trip airline tickets. That way in case they ever exhaust their life savings they could hawk the return-trip portion of their airline tickets to buy groceries. For the moment, employment prospects are bleak here, obviously. You can still collect empty bottles at 5¢ each. Also, by the looks of it, it seems that more troops are gonna be deployed to Afghanistan. The troops can't reasonalbly quit the military now because they'll be out of work in the civilian sector in a down economy. By that measure, if it wasn't for the War, the US military wouldn't need the current level of enlisted men and women. What a hypothetical scenario that would make employment-wise, mainly because the troops would be booted off the US bases with more zeal than they were pursued to enlist. If there were no War, the savings would be spent on domestic programs and it's financial surge would lift the economy? It might, but that would take a few years to induce the desired product, and meanwhile.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

My Brand of Aspirin


Something has been pissing me off these past few days. However, nothing worth blogging about beyond that.

Vapors


The snow storm that has been forcasted for the past 2-days never quite made it to Waikiki. Not even a November Rain (guns-and-roses). There must be more behind that song. After pau work, we use to stop at Brandy's Bar in Stadium Mall (Ice Palace) to shoot pool, I was the designated driver, so I only drank soda, but sober as I was then, during wet kind weather, I seem to remember that guns-and-roses song that they played on the karaoke machine.


Bought this brand of smokeless cigarettes tonight at Long's Drugs.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Wednesday's Skies

At 11am the jets do a flyby outside my lanai (balcony) in the skies above the Ala Wai canal on their way to Punchbowl National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific where they execute the missing man formation in commemoration of Veteran's Day. It's always a somber sight to take in as the jets roar by. See photo below. On the topic of photos, Rowena recently inquired about borrowing a photo from this blog. I'm guessing that she intends to show it to her dogs and they'll chew it up in place of the household furniture. Hotel Waikiki's official policy in that regards is an unequivocal, "no need even ask," and the blanket permission applies to anyone and everyone else as well. However, if you really really want to purchase a random photo outright, then I'll let you steal it for a measly $5,000 for the masterpiece. You've probably already noticed that my photos have all been watermarked to insure attribution. Yes, borrowers could easily erase the watermark or crop the photo and feign that they're the original author, but like who really cares. Also, big news, I've finally shimmed the microwave on the kitchen counter so the door stays put in the fully open position while I'm taking things out of it.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Giant Santa is Up at Ala Moana Shopping Center .... Already

It's all part of a sales strategy to rake in money early because by next month the picking will be thin insofar as people dropping krugerrands into Xmas kettles. If you know the song. O' christmas tree, O' christmas tree. No mo presents under the christmas tree. Random thoughts .... I am Atlas holding up the world on his shoulders. Then it came to be that I needed to take a pee. Badly. So, I took the world off my shoulders and put it down for a moment and da fucken thing started to roll away. Forgot I was standing on a slope. Moving on, state tax revenues in Hawaii are down 11 percent for the first four months of the fiscal year compared to the same period last year and last year it was 8 percent lower from 2007 .... or almost a whopping 20 percent drop from 2 years previous.




®Spam and more ®Spam


I wasn't aware that Spam came in so many flavors. When I saw the spam galore on the shelves the sheer sight of it all, transported me into that place otherwise known as da zone, as in, I began instinctively stacking the various flavors of Spam on top of each other to take a family portrait. Shoppers in the same aisle may have thought it a bit odd. I wasn't wearing my Hotel Waikiki press badge. No Reservations. On the very top of the heap is a half-size can of spam.


Last but not least, Spam Singles.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Mouse Story

*Just to keep you posted, I didn't buy the mouse yet.

Because nothin' lasts forever, Even cold November rain

Went riding this morning on Iron Horse only to get drenched a few minutes out around Diamond Head crater at Kapiolani Park in Waikiki. That's what you get for wearing the same T-shirt for 4-days straight, I suppose. By that logic and by that logic alone if I started out the day instead by wearing a new t-shirt the weather would be dry and perhaps I'd even be responsible for a drought. Slipped on a new t-shirt obviously the one I had on was wet and as in presto the sun appeared out of nowhere.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Your Tax Dollars at Work

How about this for a stimulus? Give drivers 5-gallons of free gasoline. Non-drivers get a voucher to buy something at the gas station's convenience store. Honk if you like.

No honks?

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Flash Flood

"Repair work on Ala Wai main break could continue into tomorrow...."


This is how things look after having rode smack dab into a water main break on Ala Wai Blvd. and believe me the pics don't do the new paint scheme justice.  From a distance it appeared like only surface water from that jackass who always waters the grass strip along the sidewalk outside his apartment building until water overflows onto the street, but it simply wasn't so, the entire width of the street was ankle deep in water. Splash. Right into miniature sinkhole with it's jaccuzi on high. 4am in the morning.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

News You Could Use

Did you know that a few select waffle makers have plates that are removable, and you're able to slip on a different set of plates to grill steaks on what was formerly a waffle maker?


"This acrylic dome opens a window to the world that satisfies your doggie's natural curiosity while maintaining safety and security. 12-inch diameter by 5-inch deep."

WTF (wed-thur-friday)

On some days it seems that all that's left to do is to shrug your shoulders and slap your forehead. I'll leave the reason thereof to your own imagination. I surmise that you've been there of too. Perhaps, you haven't, I dunno. At any rate, I saw this on television. This guy who has been living in a "green house" since the age of 8 and still does. He looks like he's in his 40's. His father is a retired mechanic and he's an electrical engineer, perfect match, profession-wise to maintain a green house. They have everything and anything that there is to save energy built into or attached to their house. Hot water panels. Solar voltaic panels, those are frequently mistaken for hot water panels, instead their function is to produce electricity. Pipes that siphon cold air from deep underground to air-condition their house. Windmills.

Their electric meter runs in reverse on many days. That is, they net enough excess energy to backfeed it into the electric grid and the electric company sends them a payment instead of a bill. That said, the green-house man noted that people won't be motivated to install energy conserving devices "to save the enviroment." However, they'll do it if the green devices saves them money. Plain and simple. Obviously, he does it as an overgrown hobby. But for others, the incentive lies in the dollars and cents angle. Then as an added bonus, they may claim that they're are enviromentally conscious people bent on saving the planet.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Ummm I'm Thinking....Butterball Turkey

You might have seen the sunrise differently this morning from your perspective, like, it's snowing in many parts of the country and people there may have had visions of Frosty the Snowman on their horizon approaching into the holiday season. The syndrome is known as early onset of holiday....I forget the last part. At any rate, rumor has it that stores are planning to unleash pre-Thanksgiving sales on the general population. Aren't Thanksgiving sales essentially pre-Christmas sales replete with Christmas music? If they keep up the early sales trend, they'll be marking down unsold Xmas ornaments and gift wrapping paper by the last week of November. Happy Thanksgiving, just the same.

East is East and West is West, and Never the Twain Shall Meet