You can take your $99 TomTom and shove it, thank you.

I hate shopping. Well, I don't really hate shopping, I just hate crowds, and lines, and surly cashiers, and having to pee with a cart full of stuff, and people who walk in front of me and start flipping through a rack while hello, I'm standing right here, and credit card bills. Other than that, I LOVE shopping.

Love it, love it, love it.

I have never been shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, or Black Friday, as it's called. I won't even go near the supermarket, in the event that god forbid, they've slashed prices on aluminum foil and canned peas in a competitive spirit. If I ruled the world, I would do all my shopping at 3am in empty stores while the rest of the world slept but everything else, including Starbucks, would be open for my benefit. Oh, and Cinnabons would cause rapid weight loss.

I don't even like DRIVING on Black Friday. I stay at home and imagine streets filled with madwomen who have been up since 3am, trunks filled with shopping bags, angrily crashing into each other trying to get to Old Navy before their coupon expires.

Fuck that noise.

I plan to spend tomorrow in my house. Where it's safe, and there's popcorn, and a nice view of the lake. Good luck to the rest of you.

PS, I need a juicer.

Edited to add:

Nov. 28, 2008 - Wal-Mart worker dies in Black Friday stampede

Life on Mars

Went to a birthday party over the weekend.

The entire family is incredibly nice and they all have a great sense of humor. Well, not like, a collective sense of humor. Their own individual.. whatever.

Both parents are attorneys and many of the kids in attendance were from the birthday girl's new Montessori day care. It was really nice - everyone was friendly, the kids were funny and cute, but the thing that struck me the most was that the party was a mixed collection of intelligent people like I haven't experienced in a long time. I've been living in Florida for about 6 years now, and I can only hope that I held up my end of the conversation, and didn't just sit on the edge of the sofa, drooling blankly. There were a couple recent transplants to south Florida - the women were from LA and New York, and when I asked them how they were adjusting, they both commented on the lack of culture in south Florida.

Somewhere, in the back of my head, a dim light went on... (then it flickered, then it went out). I remembered how strange it was for me when I first moved to Florida to have to travel for at least 45 minutes to get to a museum, or the weird lack of live music, or films in the park, or parks, for that matter, or big crowds at the libraries, or buzzing bookstores, or tapas bars... or just people who looked interesting in general. I realize I've slowly come to regard these things as luxuries, which is strange, for someone who grew up in New York and always had immediate interestingness within reach. Six years later, I've apparently had a lobotomy, and could only sit on the edge of the sofa and nod dully.

But there were blackberries. And the birthday girl got some squeaky shoes that I really, really wished came in my size. And the birthday girl's dad made scary looking fish out of spiny kiwanos. And I got a piece of cake, although someone else's kid made a beeline for the cake line like her hair was on fire... ok, it was my kid.

We like cake, shut up.

The Zoo

Kara, Bobby and I decided to take Malena up to the zoo today, and meet Eric and Christine up there with their two kids.

Since Florida weather varies drastically from county to county, we left sun-filled skies and spent the day up north, getting rained on. Heavily. We were all soaked and dripping, but we made it through most of the park. It would have been fantastic, if some moron didn't spend the day singing "Someone Told Me It's All Happening at the Zoo".

OK, it was me.